


Product Of A Murderer

by Caspinn, kalkoenvsneoklak



Series: Sweet Child of Mine [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Building up to Infinity War - Freeform, Civil War (Marvel), Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Alex Summers, Mentions of Fantastic Four, Mentions of Norse Mythology, Mentions of T'Challa - Freeform, Multi, Original Character(s), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), True Friendshipgoals - Freeform, halp, mentions of Scott Lang
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-02-14 19:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 29
Words: 96,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13014456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caspinn/pseuds/Caspinn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalkoenvsneoklak/pseuds/kalkoenvsneoklak
Summary: Yaël, a twenty-four-year-old girl with the powers to control the four elements, lost all her memories after a terrible incident. While trying to get her memories back, she somehow befriends Wade Wilson and Peter Parker. It’s a bumpy road,  because after being gone for almost a year, everyone thinks she’s dead and there are many different reactions to her comeback. That …and while struggling to remember her life as it was before, she discovers that she isn’t who she thought she was. Maybe there are a few things she doesn’t want to remember at all… .





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the third part of the Sweet Child of Mine-series, so:  
> • If you want to read more about the story of Peter, Tony and Steve, you should read part one of the series: Being a Stark.  
> • If you’re interested in the story of Natasha Romanoff and James “Bucky” Barnes, I suggest you to read part two of the series: Golden Locks, Silver Arms.  
> I want to thank my friend for all her patience and for rereading everything. She’s not a robot, though, so if something looks weird, please let me know!
> 
> PS: Is Tumblr easier to read? Follow this story on the blog yaelsstory.
> 
> I'll try to post weekly! Mark 'try' :D

 

“Your name is Yaël. Believe me when I say that you should actually be locked up instead of put in this apartment. I guess you can thank your great savior Professor X for that.” The man, who introduced himself as Nick Fury, said.

The bald man next to him, professor X apparently, nodded. “I’ve seen what she is capable of, she needs a second chance. I helped her train…”

“You clearly didn’t help her enough, didn’t you?” Fury countered evenly.“And only the big guy upstairs knows what she will remember of that training of yours. But whatever, she doesn’t remember a thing, so here goes her second chance.”

Wow, Yaël must have fucked things up before she lost her memory. This Fury didn’t seem close to liking her.

“We weren’t finished training,but… that doesn’t matter now,” Professor X turned his wheelchair towardsYaël “What does matter is that we can’t give you too much information about before you lost your memories. The doctors said that remembering things too quickly could cause trauma.”

He sighed. Yaël blinked a few times, waiting for him to continue. She kept her gaze away from Fury.

“But I think you’ll be capable to carry the truth. So, I want you to contact me whenever you see things you don’t understand and we’ll figure these out together,” Professor X continued.Yaël wanted to snort; the only thing that was traumatizing her was thisfugly apartment these two men had put her in. She guessed that the lack of luxury or money was also a punishment for whatever she had done before.

But seeing things she didn’t understand? Call him? What did he mean by that?

“You’ll get what I mean when you see it,” Professor X quickly added when he saw the confusion on her face.

Fury and Professor X then moved towards the door and before they left, Fury said: “Oh, and please prove to me that you’re a responsible, normal adult this time.”

With that, he shut the door behind them, leaving Yaël alone.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later

Okay, so living alone for two weeks had been…an experience?In the beginning Yaël cleaned her apartment every day. Despite that, it still smelled like turd, mixed with rotting dead animal.

She also quickly discovered that Fury was giving her way too little money. Two days after Nick and Professor X had left, she already hadn’t had enough money to buy groceries for the following week.And when she naively called him about it, he answered her that she already had cost him enough money – which was not fair because she didn’t even know what she had done! So Yaël had decided, on day three, that she should get a job.

She started working for this man, Diego, who made her help in elder people’s gardens to get the weeds out. Of course, this wasn’t totally legal, but nobody wanted to hire a girl with literally no identity or resume.

On the fifth day, she went back to the grocery store. She got some food and walked passed a whole rack filled with hair dye on sale. So, of course, Yaël painted her hair blue. Because that felt like a fun thing to do and it would piss Fury off for her not being an adult.

Afterwards she kind of regretted it, because being mature was her only chance to get out of her sickening apartment…oh, and because Fury gave her even less money after that. Great…

On the seventh day, Yaël felt bored so she bought an old cello that had been repaired with duct-tape. It was pure instinct, like, she sort of knew she could play the instrument. That cello became her best friend, even though it sounded miserable, because, indeed, Yaël knew very well how to play it.

She decided to earn more money by playing the cello on the streets. She was a very… expressive person when she played. She rammed on that thing and sometimes played sweet, but other times aggressive sounding music.

She got money from it. Some people gave it because she played so beautifully. Some just for having her stop breaking their ears. A few days later, Yaël took all the money she had earned that day by playing cello and working in gardens and went to a bar.

The next day, she woke up with a headache and a random man in her bed. After Yaël had shooed the man away, she got a text from Fury to tell her that she had been behaving irresponsible, so he would give her even less money.

Great.

 

* * *

 

 

The alarm went off.

Yaël tried to get to the snooze button, but as she raised her hand, her fingers got stuck in her own hair. It was all fuzzy and it had knots everywhere, but that’s what you get when you color your hair blue and don’t take further care of it.

Turning off the infernal sound coming out of the machine on her nightstand she turned around to get back to sleep, but she accidentally rolled onto the file the two men had given her. There was only one paper in it.

It must be the smallest dossier in the history of dossiers, sinceYaël didn’t seem to get the right to learn about herself. Professor X had told her that they’d all work together to help her with her missing memories.

Well, Yaël hadn’t seen the two men anymore and it was two days after that grumpy text she got from Fury. She hadn’t seen them in two weeks and she had the feeling that these two were busy and important men. She probably was no priority to them…

Yaël took the dossier and looked at it. It said her birthday was on the first of May and that she would become 25 this year. Her astrological sign was Taurus, apparently.

Well, with that info, she couldn’t get a real job anywhere. Someone also wrote down she had asthma, but somehow, Yaël doubted that. There was something weird going on with her voice, she was sure about that. It sounded hoarse, like she was sick, had a cold.

But the thing was, that hoarse sound never went away. It costed her a little bit more effort to breathe while talking, but it wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t rattle or chatter anymore. Though, her voice sounded like it wasn’t completely hers. And then there was that accent, which was hers. She was completely sure about that, but why did she talk so differently than the other Americans and-

Shit, didn’t she have to mow the lawn of Ms. Tenson today? Yaël jumped out of her bed and searched for clothes. She found a pair of old, dark blue, Harlem trousers and a worn out, black top with a few little holes in it. Yaël ran to her moldy bathroom and brushed her teeth. She did her best to brush her hair…

Oh, shoot! If she only had enough money to buy hair products to get the knots out and make her hair look less a mess…

Suddenly someone knocked on her door. Yaël stumbled towards it with her mouth filled with toothpaste, mumbling some insults to the chair she almost fell over. When she opened the door she saw the ugliest man alive.

His head looked like an enormous raisin. It didn’t bother her though. She guessed she was used to worse, but she wouldn’t know.

“Whabbub?” she mumbled while the toothpaste dripped out of her mouth a bit. The man grinned widely and walked in without her permission. He laid down on her bed after testing it with his hand. Yaël just frowned at him, holding up her hand in a questioning gesture when

“Yo, my name is Wade, and I’m here to be your friend. You know, your friendly neighborhood Deadpool. That’s my superhero name, in case you don’t know.”  
Yaël went back to the bathroom to spit the toothpaste out.

“They send you, right?”

“I’m hired, especially for you!”

“So they even pay you to be my friend, but they don’t pay me to buy shampoo? Great!” Yaël threw her hands in the air and rolled her eyes. Wade shrugged. “So, now I have a superhero friend? What, to teach me how to be responsible and shit?”

“Well, no, I’m the wrong person to teach you about being responsible. They just discovered that you were doing dumb shit by being lonely and they needed to get rid of me. Or give me some kind of useful purpose, I guess. Well, they paid me better than the other dudes who wanted me to help them rob a bank.”

Yaël raised her eyebrow “So you’re not good or bad? You just do what’s gives you the most money?”

“Most of the time, Merc with a mouth, after all! Now, let’s go. It’s Friday and I need to stalk Parker in the pizzeria.”

“Pizza? It’s morning?” Yaël asked. What exactly did they saddle her up with here?

“Yeah yeah, pizza is for after the movie!” He waved it off as if it was the most obvious answer.

“What movie?”

“Star Wars!”

Yaël didn’t even ask questions and took her backpack. She was glad to leave this stinkhole, even if it was to stalk someone in a pizzeria or something.

But… “Shit, I have to help Ms. Tenson in her garden and I don’t have money for a pizza!”

Wade rolled his eyes. “I took care of it, duh!” he said. “Jezus, are you coming or not?”

Yaël grinned as she closed her door behind her and locked it.

 

* * *

 

 

“Okay, so who are we stalking again?” Yaël asked while stuffing her mouth with pizza. She had put her hair in a messy knot, but a few strings were accidentally left out.

“Okay,” Wade answered, “that super handsome boy over there, who is achieving money from that way too ordinary-looking couple, will be my next boyfriend.” Yaël raised an eyebrow.

“Dude, he’s like…twelve!” she countered, taking in the boyish look from the kid. His hair was brown and messy, he was scrawny, almost looking… weak?

“Sixteen,” Wade corrected her. She rolled her eyes.

“Doesn’t matter! He is a teenager and you’re, like, thirty!”

Wade sighed dramatically “For the love of God, are you always that picky? Besides, I won’t get older than this. I just have to wait a few years until he is an adult and…wait is he trying to escape?”

Yaël nodded in agreement as she saw Peter turn around after he noticed them.

“Jup, there goes your crush,” she joked. Wade scraped his throat before he corrected her.

“Soulmate, honey.” Then he inhaled sharply and before Yaël could ask what he was doing, Wade started yelling like a lunatic. “PETERRRRR PARKEEERRRRR!”

The boy seemed to startle. Almost seeming afraid, he looked back and Yaël saw his face turn red.People were looking up curiously and stare at the young boy. Poor soul, being stalked by Wade in such a public place.

She shot an angry glance at Wade, but he just ignored her.The kid looked a bit annoyed as he walked towards them. Heclearly recognized Wade. Yaël asked herself how many times Wade had already been stalking him.

“Yes, can I help you, sir?” he asked politely, but Yaël saw him frown a bit. This boy had the worst poker face ever. Yaël hoped he’d be able to stay kind to Wade, otherwise he might get fired.

Why did she follow this big old raisin? He was even making her feel awkward, dammit!

Suddenly, the smile left Wade’s face as he looked dead serious at the kid. “There is a spider in my pizza.”

Did Peter just raise his eyebrow a bit?

“The fuck, Wade…” Yaël mumbled to herself. But Wade must’ve heard her, because his laughter suddenly rumbled through the whole restaurant. Yaël kicked him under the table as she looked at Peter with a I-am-so-sorry-I-brought-this-mentally-ill-raisin-to-this-restaurant-face. Wade leaned back to laugh even harder and when he finally stopped his concert, he sniffed a bit as he dried his eyes.

“No nono, I was kidding, I just need the bill, and then I want to hire you as my personal pizza-delivery boy.” He said with wiggling eyebrows. Was he flirting with an underage teen in a full restaurant?! Yaël planted her face against the table. Where did they find this idiot and why did he have to be her new babysit?

“The fuck, dude?” the Parker-kid asked. It was loud enough for the owner to hear.

 

* * *

 

 

“Dude, I think you got him fired!” Yaël said as they took the cab back to her apartment. Wade shrugged.

“Nah, the owner knows that I’d leave if he fired Parker, since I made a special request for that kid.”

Yaël sighed. “That guy must be crazy. He doesn’t know who you are, he could send that boy into his death by forcing him to deliver for you.” Wade didn’t react to that, so Yaël stopped staring at the city lights and turned to her supposed babysit.

This time he was staring through the window, so she couldn’t see his face. Did she… insult him?

“Wade, I’m sorry, I-I should not have-“

But when the raisin looked back at her, he was grinning widely. “Look, girlie, you don’t know me either and for the love of dwarves eating Chinese food, I would never harm that kid! Now, you wanna go on an adventure?” The cab stopped.

“What kind of adventure?” she asked while opening the door. Wade did the same.

“Well, there is this squirrel wandering around in the city, and it’s the size of a girl. A girl-sized squirrel!” he answered excited while paying the driver too much money. Well, that sounded like something Yaël had to see, too!

She forgot about Wade’s behavior in the restaurant and nodded with a big smile. Then she remembered she had to work in Mr. and Ms. Thompson’s garden and started shaking her head. She still had some time before she should go to bed, it was only 8 pm, but she needed to eat and shower and hunting a squirrel girl together with Wade could probably cause some physical damage.

She couldn’t show up with the two old people, looking like she had been fighting a bear… they’d fire her!

“You’re sending mixed signals here.” Wade smirked.

“I have to work tomorrow, but if you want a drink…” she said while pointing at the apartment building. It was meant to be red, but it could use fresh paint… or a fresh building.

Wade shrugged and followed her through a blurred glass door with a big wooden handle to push it open. It immediately led to a hallway with an old elevator to the right and the stairs in front of them. Yaël pressed the button to summon the car and waited.

But after a few minutes she grunted and started knocking on the door that could only open when the lift arrived.

“Lady, you need some snickers,” Wade jokes.

“Wait for it…” Yaël said with a wink as she kept knocking and then yelled: “MS. THOMAS? YOU FELL ASLEEP BETWEEN THE DOORS AGAIN!”

They heard someone mumble somewhere above them and a few seconds later, the ‘ding’ sounds at last.

As they arrived at the sixth floor, with the same used-to-be-white walls with here and there holes in the papers so the bricks were showing (as everywhere in the building and carpet that had the color of puke)Yaël lifted her backpack from one of her shoulders and started looking for a key.

They stopped at her door. On the other side of the hallway that was so small only two people could walk side by side, was a window. It was completely useless because it couldn’t open. Yaël tried it many times, because the hallway always smelled like sweat and she wanted to refresh it.

The window probably wouldn’t help at all, because it only led to a small alley with garbage bins. And that wasn’t to speak about the lights, which were just as useless. Most of them didn’t even work! And the ones that did gave enough light for Yaël to find her bed, which consisted of two mattresses placed on each other, at night. Luckily it was day now, so the window above her bed let in enough light to provide her whole room.

Yaël walked to her little fridge. “What do you want? I have water, or beer, or… oh jeez, this milk is bad news, yo!” She threw it in the bin. “I also have orange juice!”

She was surprised when she found the beverage in the back of her fridge. Wade jumped into her little, two-person sofa.

“Some juice would be great, honey! Oh, do you have ice cubes?”

“Eh, no, I make these myself,” she said a bit muffled with her head still in the fridge. Wade cocked his eyebrow.

“Yeah, don’t we all…. You have to put them in the freezer, you know that, right?”

“I’m not mentally ill, asshole! Look!” She took a glass out of a cupboard and filled it with orange juice. Then she put it down next to the sink, opened the tap and rolled her sleeves up. Her hand reached towards the water, but she didn’t touch it. Instead, she moved her fingers like she was handling an invisible pincer.

As she closed the tap with her other hand, some water kept flowing in front of her fingers like a bubble. First, she played with it by moving her fingers, so the bubble danced however she wanted it to. She was controlling the water.

Wade looked at it like he was a kid at the circus. Yaël moved the water until it hung above Wade’s glass. Then she formed her hand into a tight fist. Wade saw the water turn into ice in just a second. Yaël dropped the ice in the juice and handed the glass to Wade. He smiled, as if the juice would taste even better now.

“Cool! Can you teach me that trick?”

“Uh, no, obviously.” Yaël filled her own glass with water and sat down on the rug in front of Wade.

“So… you can control water?” Wade asked. Yaël took a sip from her water but didn’t look up.

“Well, eh, I can control the four elements,” she explained. Wade jumped up, while clapping his hands, a little bit too excited.

“YOU’RE THE AVATAR!” he exclaimed. Yaël rolled her eyes.

“No. I don’t know if you noticed but Aang is very smooth in handling his powers. I’m… not.” She answered dryly. She had discovered the series a few days ago and she had been binge-watching it secretly. Yaël had also been thinking about it for a few days and she couldn’t shake the feeling that her powers were the source of this nightmare.

They must’ve something to do with why Fury doesn’t like her and why she is locked up in this ugly ass cage.

“Is this what they teach you at school in Germany? Together with changing eye color?” Wade sat down again and spread his legs over the entire sofa. Not that it bothered Yaël, her rug was fluffy enough to even sleep on. She knew that out of (drunken) experience.

“Wha- I’ve never even been in Germany?” she muttered out. But she understood what Wade was talking about. Her words sounded different, some were even difficult to pronounce.It was the accent. When Yaël first met Ms. Thompson, the old lady that lived in the room right under hers, she had also asked where Yaël came from.

Just like Ms. Tenson… and that guys from McDonald’s.

Wade pulled her out of her thoughts. “Yeah, or Sweden or Austria or wherever the fuck you come from.”

Yaël stood up and walked to her bed. “But… my file says nothing about Europe?” Yaël took the file and looked at that one page they had given her. It actually didn’t mention where she came from. “Weird…” Yaël mumbled.

“Yup, Furry and X are clearly hiding something from you.” Wade mentioned casually, like he was talking about the weather.

“Great.” Yaël sighed. “Wait, Furry?”

“You know who,” Wade said with a wink.

“Oh, and that eye color thing is something I can’t control,” Yaël said as she remembered Wade’s earlier question “It depends on what element I’m using. When I’m handling something from the category earth, they turn green. With air, they turn grey. Fire makes them brown and water-“

“Blue!” Wade interrupted her. Yaël nodded and threw the file back on her bed.

“Yup, and when I’m using no element at all, my eyes are ochre. So I think that’s my actual eye color, right?”

“Guess so.”

After a friendly discussion over favorite Avatar-characters (Wade fanboyed over Toph, while Yaël admired Zuko) and some sandwiches, Yaël kicked the guy out. She jumped into her moldy shower, tried to brush her hair, cleaned her teeth and planted herself face-down in bed. She fell asleep like that for a few minutes, woke up with a sore neck and then dug herself under the blanket.

As soon as she saw the cage around her, she knew she was having that weird dream again. This was the third night on a row. Yaël looked around, but she already knew what she’d see.

There was only woods around her, dark, deep woods. She saw the towers of a castle at the horizon, raising from somewhere deep in the woods. To her left, close to her cage, there was a little house. It looked old, like a cottage, with plants growing over it.

Somehow, it looked welcoming to Yaël, with the curtains, the old, wooden door and the shutters. The girl kept staring at the little house, because she knew what was coming. And yes, after a few second, she saw him walking around behind the window next to the door. He was too far away to show any features, but somehow, Yaël knew it was a man. She wasn’t able to walk to the house to sneak in and check what he looked like, because she was stuck in some sort of glass cage, like always in this weird dream.

“Are you alright?”

Yaël jumped and turned around, she felt her heart beat fast in her chest. It was a tall, blonde man. It wasn’t the first time she saw him in this dream, he had been there the previous two times too, but it was the first time he spoke.

“Miss?” the man frowned a bit, he looked worried. Why wouldn’t Yaël be alright? As she tried to nod, the girl noticed that she suddenly couldn’t move anymore. She forgot about the house, the man and the woods for a moment. What the hell?!

Her arms were bound tightly against her chest. Around her neck, wrists and ankles, she felt some kind of metal device. Was this thing draining her energy so she’d be less movable? All the devices were connected with thick and thin cables to a machine outside of the top of the glass cage. Yaël wanted to say something, but her throat felt so dry and she tasted blood. Had she been fighting?

Usually she’d just stare into the woods from her cage while the blonde man would just stare at her with his blue eyes. Why was it this time all so different?Yaël’s heart started to race even faster as she started to panic. Why the heck was she locked up like some kind of weird, wild lab-animal?

“No need to panic, this is… for your own safety.” The man sounded like he didn’t even believe that himself. He was able to follow her pulse on the monitor in front of him.

A monitor in the freaking middle of nowhere. What was this dream?

“C-can you give me some water, please?” Yaël asked, her voice sounded hoarse, like she had been screaming all day. The man looked down and frowned thoughtfully.

“I shouldn’t,” he mumbled as he looked back up. His blue eyes crossed hers. They looked familiar somehow. He sat down on the chair behind the monitor and with a blink of an eye, he suddenly was reading a book.

Right, Yaël was dreaming, she reminded herself. This wasn’t real. She was curious though… what was the man reading? She stared at the book, hoping that the guy would move his book so she could read the front.

The man looked up and saw her curiosity. “Of Mice and Man,” he said as he shut the book and lifted it so Yaël could see the front.

She didn’t know that book, but it surely looked old. The papers were yellowed, and the cover looked like it had gone through a war.

“It reminds me of older times, of my… youth.” He looked at bit doubtful when he said youth, like he wasn’t really sure if that was the correct word for what he meant. Well, Yaël totally didn’t get what he was talking about. That book looked older than its owner, who looked like he was thirty-something.

He lowered the book again and stared at the cover. It was completely silent for a moment, what made Yaël feel even more stuck. She wanted to scratch her neck, she wanted to move, turn around and take a good look at that house again.

Being unable to move itched even more in complete silence. Yaël sighed, she was almost sweating from getting nervous. Her hair tickled her neck. Something beeped on the monitor. It probably showed her rising heart rate. The man looked up and checked the screen. Then he looked at Yaël.

“I don’t-, Shall I-“ the man looked tired as he rubbed his eyes. He thought for a minute. “Do you want me to read it out loud?”

Yaël nodded, listening to a story would distract her from being locked up. She gave him a little smile for his act of kindness.

The blonde man was a calm reader. His voice sounded soothing… too soothing. Yaël felt herself slip away. Which feels weird in a dream. She fought it, but closed her eyes after a while. Yaël opened her eyes again immediately and stared to a yellowed ceiling with cracks in it. One second later, the alarm of her cellphone went off: time to get up.  
 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays! I wish you all warmth, love and the strength to follow your dreams and reach your goals!
> 
> Inspired by "The Burden"-Memphis May Fire

Mr. and Ms. Thompson were always very kind to Yaël, unlike other elderly people she worked for. Most of them just let her work in silence, ignored her existence or criticized her blue hair. Once, a man even told her he was intimidated by her eyes, so Diego had scratched this man from her working schedule. But this couple, the Thompsons always brought her drinks and cookies, smiled at her and called her ‘dear’. Yaël hoped Diego would never give this couple to another of his employee.

Yaël had been pulling out weeds for two hours now. For once she was kind of glad with the braindead job she was doing, because all she could think of was the dream she had last night. Who was that man? Did she have to call X now? Is that what he meant with seeing things?

She pulled out the last piece of weeds, stood up and stretched her back.

“Ms. Thompson, I’m finished with the weeds. Would you like me to help you with something else?” she yelled. The Thompsons always left the backdoor open so Yaël wouldn’t have to walk in with her muddy shoes to talk to them. Mrs. Thompson brought Yaël some fresh, cold lemonade and after that, Yaël mowed the lawn.

After a little chitchat with the couple, Yaël left and walked back home. While walking, she kept staring at her phone. Calling him wouldn’t hurt her, right? She searched his number through the extremely small list on her phone, being:

> DEADWADE
> 
> FURY
> 
> X

Yaël snorted as she saw Fury in her contacts. Well, at least calling Professor X couldn’t be as bad as calling Fury would be. That man doesn’t seem to like her very much. She heard a beep trough the device as she pressed ‘call’. Almost immediately, she heard cracking that made her notice that someone picked up. X was one of these people who just picked up without saying anything, apparently.

“Mister X? It’s Yaël.”

“Yes?” he didn’t sound surprised to hear her at all. Yaël scratched her head. What was she supposed to say now? It’d sound idiotic if she’d just say she had a weird dream, but how would she explain it otherwise?“Yaël?”

“Eh, I kind of, eh, had this dream-“ aaand she went with the dream-story, great. “It was about a man I think I should know, but I actually don’t know him at all. Okay, that sounded crazy, but I-“

“Okay, let’s meet up.”

“O-okay…”

“Tomorrow.”

“Great! I mean, oh no wait… I have to work tomorrow.” Crap, how was it possible that she was able to keep forgetting her job? When mister Xavier didn’t answer, Yaël quickly added: “But I guess I can call my boss to ask a day off.” Diego would be so mad at her for letting him know an evening in advance. Oh, and for skipping two days in one week. Well, Yaëlwill feel it when she’ll get her loan.

“Good, how early can you be here?” Where the heck was here? Could she go there by bus?

“Ehm, I can’t drive… But if you give me an address, I’m willing to search for something, somehow. I’ll figure it out.”

"You know what? I'll come to your apartment. Mister Fury and I were planning on checking up on you more frequently, but we're both busy men, as it seems... I'll see you tomorrow, Yaël. Good night!"

"Okay, see you- wait, what time-" But X already hung up. Great, now Yaël didn't even know when she had to get up and shower. Nine? Eight? Probably seven...maybe six. Yaël had arrived at her block and opened the door with the blurred glass to the small hallway. She decided to take the stairs, which she saw was the right decision after she walked passed the first floor.

Mrs. Thomas was sleeping against the opening of the elevator again. The woman had extremely long, black hair with a few grey locks here and there. She always wore glasses that were too big, looking like they might have been from the eighties. Yaël had never been able to put an age to that woman. She could be forty, but she also could be sixty. The woman didn't even move as Yaël passed, who decided to let her sleep. Mrs. Thomas clearly had a sleeping-problem.

A few sandwicheslater, after practicing a bit on the cello, Yaël went to bed. She felt a bit nervous for meeting Mr. X the next day. But the man came to help her, right? The girl sighed as she typed her text to Diego. This man would fire her so hard someday... and then what?

Despite her stress, Yaël somehow fell asleep. She only noticed it as she was suddenly locked up in the glass cage again when she opened her eyes. This time, it was raining outside, which sounded soothing.

For once,Yaël wasn't bound to wires at all, she was just stuck in the cage. There were lights shining through the windows of the cottage. It must really be cozy in that tiny house right now, with the sound of the rain ticking on the roof.

Again, Yaël saw the man, this time it looked like he was sitting in a rocking chair, reading a book. But, yet again, it was too far away to see what he looked like or what he was doing exactly. The only thing that she gained in sight this time was his very dark hair.

Suddenly Yaël heard voices, not coming from the woods or anything. They seemed like they came from nowhere, no direction. The voices were just there. They were arguing, and it took Yaël a while to recognize one of the two voices as the man she had been talking to in her last dream.

"You don't have anything to do with her, why would you protect her?" the unknown voice grunted.

"I have a feeling- I think she's not as guilty as we think she is," the voice that belonged to the blonde guy stated.

"Your feelings don't matter right now, she destroyed the whole city. She only brought pain and destruction!"

"She's just a kid-"

"She's not normal!"

"Neither am I! Did you even try to talk with her?"

"The girl’s our prisoner, I have no need for unicorn-related-bonding-moments. What do you want me to do? Polish her nails? Let her talk about her feelings?"

"You don't need to be an asshole about all of this," the blonde man sighed.

"The only thing we know is that she worked together with that idiotic piece of shit, you can't deny that. She's friends with him."

"Maybe she didn't know better. "

"Well, maybe she did."

"You know what? This conversation goes nowhere."

"Oh, yeah, just walk away!" the unknown man barked. Right after that, Yaël heard a door slamshut right behind her. She jumped a bit and turned around. The blonde guy stood outside the cage and looked obviously frustrated, but he tried to hide it. The only thing that gave him away was his unwitting frowning.

"You okay?" Yaël asked. The man threw her a little, polite smile.

"Yes, I'm sorry you had to hear that. Even good friends fight sometimes."

"No problem," Yaël mumbled, but it was obvious that the conversation had been about her. Who did Yaël work with? Was she supposed to be the villain? What the heck was her role in this weird world? The rain rattled around, but it seemed like it couldn’t touch the man in front of her. It fell right through him, like he wasn’t there at all. Even the wind didn’t touch his hair.

Out of the blue, Yaël heard a door slam shut behind her again, and again she turned around. She saw a tall, long-black-haired man walking away from the cottage staring at the ground as he walked. His hair did get soaked, but he didn’t seem to care as he was sunken deeply in thoughts. Yaël got curious and took a quick glance behind her to see if Mr. Blonde Ambition could see him too, but her mysterious friend had disappeared. Weird dream…

She looked back at the black-haired man and yelled “Hi!” but he didn’t seem to hear her. She yelled again and started knocking on the glass wall in front of her. The man finally looked up and froze as he met her eyes.

The last thing Yaël saw before waking up was that his eyes grew big out of surprise, even shock maybe.

 

* * *

 

 

“So, tell me, how are you doing?” Professor X asked her with a kind smile.

How was she doing? She was nervous and stressed out from cleaning her apartment again and again, from trying to look decent and restart doing her make-up three times and from doing the laundry all morning. She felt her hands shake so she put her behind her back and answered with a smile.

“Good!” she said. She just wanted to make a good impression towards the man she saw as the big chief. She wanted him to like her. Unlike Fury, who she sneakily liked triggering from time to time even though she always ended up with some kind of punishment.

“Did you get here easily? Did Ms. Thomas fell asleep in the elevator again? Do you want something to drink?” Maybe Yaël drunk too much coffee.

“I’m here now, and why don’t you sit down?” he asked her calmly as he signed to her sofa. What did you see? You can tell me. Yaël heard X’s voice in her head as soon as she sat down. She jumped a little, she forgot he did that.

Wait how did she even know he could do that? She didn’t remember him talking in her head the few times she met him after she had ‘woken up’ from ‘the accident’. Vague terms Fury used to explain her why she didn’t remember a thing. But yet, Yaël couldn’t shake some sort of déjà vu-feeling when she heard the voice inside her head.

That’s a good sign. Yaël nodded, yeah, she guessed it was a good sign.

How was this man actually ably to look so calm, serene, like nothing that she would be able to do could freak him out? Yaël told him about her two dreams and he just kept listening, he didn’t interrupt her once. After she told the story, she didn’t feel like she was a weirdo or anything.

Well, there are too many aspects in this dream to discuss today without exhausting you. There’s this forest, the house, the black-haired man, the cage… All of them are pieces of an enormous puzzle. We’re going to focus on the first man now. X lifted his suitcase he brought along from behind his wheelchair, opened it and took a few papers out of it.

He placed them on the coffeetable between them and put his suitcase back into a holder behind his wheelchair. It were photos of different people.

These are the people that you once knew here on Earth.

Wait, did Yaël also know people from other planets? Cool!

That’s a different story, a different piece of the puzzle on which we’re not going to focus today.

Okay, right.

If I’m right, you have been seeing this man. The professor pointed at one of the pictures, next to one of a red-haired woman, of a blonde, tall, muscular man, wearing a baseball cap. Yaël recognized him immediately. Right, as I thought. This man is Steve Rogers, you used to be very close friends. You mean a lot to him.

Steve… his name sounded familiar.Wait, didn’t he take care of her when she was locked up? Maybe that aspect of her dream had been real?

It had been. The conversations you had with him in your dream have really taken place in the past.

Wow, freaky… Suddenly, Yaël was standing in some kind of training hall, like a gymnasium. She looked around and saw all kinds of practice-weapons hanging on a wall. But she also saw basketball-rings, hanging on two opposite sides of the room. The floor was made of this typical rubber flooring. As Yaël was looking at the floor, she noticed she was suddenly wearing tight sports-clothing. It looked expensive.

Out of the blue, someone stomped her extremely hard against her head. She smacked against the floor and grunted.

“What the fuck!" She looked up to see who the heck was attacking her.

"Language," Steve said dryly as he reached his hand to her to help her up. Yaël took his hand and stumbled back to her feet. "What were you doing?" he asked her with a firm face.

Yeah, well, she asked herself that too. Why had she been standing there like that? "My thoughts drifted away..."

"Focus, Yaël."

Yaël neglectfully waved with her hand. "Yeah, yeah, Rogers. Let me tell you something: why are you holding yourself back? As you noticed, I don't die that easily."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "No, you don't, but you do get hurt. Now fight me, will you."

Yaël mumbled some curses as she turned back to her starting position. Hey, wait a minute... "Steve, do you want me to burn you or something? What's your purpose here?" she asked with a grin, but she'd never put him on fire.

"Yaël, please don't play with fire against me, you have enough tricks up your sleeve without putting me ablaze."

"Yeah, well, but freezing someone also burns, you know?"

"I have been frozen for a few years, Yaël. Trust me, I survived," he said a bit sarcastically. He usually didn't use a lot of sarcasm, only during training sessions and Yaël loved triggering him at these moments. "And stop thinking about it, I don't want to know how long I have to be on fire to actually get burned."

"So, you'd rather be frozen again?" She was distracting him, as much as she could distract this utterly concentrated super soldier. He saw her tap with her foot, but he was too late. She made a quick pulling-gesture with her hand and before he could turn around, Steve got knocked down by a big piece of the brick wall from behind him, flying against his back.

As Yaël didn't see any movements through the dust and stones, she walked to the pile to see if she could dig up Steve. A hand grabbed her ankle and pulled her foot away, so she landed with a smack on her back. She heard Steve's laugh and stones move as he freed himself from the pile of dirt she had caused.

Yaël grinned widely and looked at the hole in the wall she had caused. A darker-skinned man and an athletic looking woman with furious red hair stared at her with big eyes from the hallway where the hole led to. Then the woman smirked.

"Stark is so going to kill you,” she said. Wait, what? Yaël blinked.

Who were these two people? Who the heck was Stark? As she thought about that, everything went blurry. She rubbed her eyes and when she opened them again, she was suddenly sitting in her sofa again, with professor X right in front of her. This was so confusing.

"What the heck was that?"

I triggered your memories, and this was what came out of it. So, do you remember Steve?

Yaël thought. She remembered them chilling together in a sofa, just reading a bit. And him telling her she should eat more vegetables. She also remembered wandering around between some trees, fiddling with some leaves, as he passed her twenty times during his morning-jog. She also thought back about a small argument they had about one of his friends she had slept with. What was his name again... ?

Holy, cow! She totally forgot about Bucky. It was a sacred secret between her, Barnes and Steve. Her cheeks turned red as she snorted. X raised an eyebrow and smiled.

"Well, I think you remember enough for today. "  
 


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Yaël got a call from Diego with the message that if she didn't show up today, she'd be fired. In compensation, she worked a lot of extra hours in the following few days. On Friday, when she finally got home, she took a shower and put her pajamas on along with her fluffy socks. Once seated on the couch she received a text from Wade. A bit ashamed for not texting him earlier, due to her long working days, she opened it. 

\- Yo, Sugarmuffin. Chasin the Squirrelgirl took me a few more days than I expected. Or maybe my decapitation did after I fell from a tree... on an electric fence. Ukno, the sort with the sharp pin-thingies on top? Like in a jail? Not that I ended up in jail during the6 days we didn't see each other. Hehehe. Well, anyhow, I somehow ended up in Death Valley, ukno, that place with all the sand and rocks? It took me until 2day to grow back arms and hands, so now I'm able to text again. I'm still laying in the sand at the moment, since I still only have grown back baby legs... But I think I'll be back by tomorrow evening. So, what do u think? Wanna hang out?

Yaël grinned as she read the text. So, this man really couldn’t die? How was that even possible? Or was he joking? How does a man get immortal? She received a following text.

\- Because I'm a mutant, you know, like mutated. Like, really badly mutated so I have this stupid face now

Then he send her a selfie, making a peace-sign with a freakishly small hand. In the background there was only sand and rocks, like he had said. Yaël typed an answer.

\- How did you even know what I was thinking? Dude, so if I shoot you in the head, you still won’t die? I had a lovely date with X a few days ago and worked long shifts after that, but I think your life has been a bit more adventurous in the past few days. See you tomorrow, moron. Xoxo. 

Yaël sighed as she put her phone away and jumped on her bed which bounced back a little. Maybe Wade was a few hundred years old?Did being immortal count as a superpower? Wait a minute, was she mutated too? 

She should call Cap and ask him… Yaël used to discuss everything with the man, because it always seemed he had some kind of answer to all of her weird questions and his patience was golden. She could ask these mutant-questions to Wade too, but the whole point was that she missed calling Steve for the simplest things. And having a conversation with Wade could go anywhere instead of getting answers. 

She wanted to call Cap as soon as she remembered him, but then she discovered Wade had been right. X and Fury were keeping things from her. When Yaël had asked X for Steve’s number, he had shaken his head. 

No, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that yet. You see, everyone that once knew you, thinks you’re dead, X had explained. 

Of course, Yaël had asked him why. 

That’s a decision Nick made. I think he sort of wanted to test you, see what you are worth without anyone around you to influence you. Maybe he wanted to see your true colors. 

But Yaël was smart enough to understand. Fury put her in a cage like a wild animal to see if she’d become the beast he thought she was. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I want you to see your friend again. I’d be a shame if we’d keep you separated, but I want to talk to Nick first. So that he has a chance to prepare Steve and the others, if he wants to. 

So, everything was actually in Fury’s hands… Great! 

To distract herself a bit from her frustrations against Fury, Yaël took her phone back and went on the Wi-fi of the hotel next to the apartment-building. She researched about rosin for her bow and checked the prices for a new cello again. She had already done that a few times and every time she was disappointed again in how pricey these instruments were. 

Without knowing it, she must’ve fallen asleep, because suddenly she was standing in the woods again. 

“Jesus, am I going to have these dreams daily now?” she mumbled to herself. 

“That’s strange, your beliefs never laid with Jesus.” Yaël turned her head. There he stood, not Steve, but the black-haired man. He was wearing some kind of brown, worn cloak which covered his whole body, so she couldn’t see what else he was wearing underneath. She couldn’t even see his feet by the length of the thing. Yaël had the feeling that Steve wouldn’t enter these kinds of dreams anymore now that she remembered him. 

“How would you know that?” she asked him after she remembered he had said something. The man just shrugged as an answer. “Okay, then who are you?” 

The man’s lips turned a tint lighter as he pressed them together after that question. For a split-second, it seemed like Yaël hurt him. But then, a smirk ran over his face as he answered. 

“That’s not important now. What is of importance is that you break out of that cage.” 

“Why?”Yaël asked. Not that she wanted to stay in that glass box, of course. The guy lifted his eyebrow sarcastically. 

“How fast do you think you can get your memories back when you’re stuck in a doghouse?” he asked. 

Yaël looked around. The cage was sealed with another glass plate that also looked like it was unbreakable due to its thickness. 

“Don’t tell me you don’t know how to get out?” she heard the man mumble bitterly. He made her feel dumb.

“I have the feeling this cage was specifically designed to keep people like me in. It’s protected against my powers, somehow, I think,” she whispered these last two words, as she wasn’t really sure why she thought all of this. The man sighed, but his face softened.

“They once were, in the real world, when you were really stuck in it. But this is a dream, remember that. You can manipulate it.” Yaël nodded. Yeah, he was probably right. The problem was, Yaël knew well enough that she wasn’t trained at all. Controlling her powers was a big challenge. But she had to try. 

Yaël breathed on deeply and rubbed the palm of her hands against each other. It had been a long time since she had done this, from before the accident. She sped up and as she breathed out again, she opened her hands. At that exact moment she steered a massive amount of fire against the glass wall. 

Flames shot around and rebounded from the glass. Within a second, Yaël had the feeling she turned the cage into an oven and she was getting baked in it. The smoke started to suffocate her as she tried to take the flames back. 

“Not your smartest move, Yaël,” the man said dryly, but he did nothing to help her. After a struggle, Yaël got rid of the flames, but was still stuck with some smoke and she was oh, so cold from using fire as she used a lot of her own body temperature to create the flames. She coughed and rubbed her eyes. Her heart raced as she started to panic. 

Stones, she was in a forest, there are stones and rocks. Her lungs itched as she stumped a foot against the bottom glass plate. She shoved her feet apart from each other and bended her knees. As she quickly launched her fist into the air, she heard the dirt outside the cage, in front of the man, split open. Calmly, he took a step backwards with his hands against his back, to stay out of the reach of the giant rock she pulled out of the ground, like he had seen her doing that trick a million times before. 

Yaël made pulling movements with her arms, her hands were formed into fists. As she kept moving, the rock rammed and smacked against the glass wall. It made a few cracks, but it went way to slow. Yaël had trouble with breathing from all the smoke. 

“It’s just a dream, you can break it!” the man yelled at her. She almost didn’t hear him, with all the noise the rock made while smacking against the glass.

Yaël’s eyes itched so badly, she felt tears running down her face. Being cold while standing in warm smoke was a strange feeling. Moving her fingers started to feel weird. All her instincts yelled at her, she needed to do something or she’d die in that stupid cage. With one hand, she kept knocking the rock against the wall, with the other, she wiped away her tears.

Her tears. 

Within a second, Yaël was steering water into her hand, froze it in her fist into a sharp shape and started throwing these pieces of ice, one by one against the cracks she was making with the rocks she was steering with her other hand. To be able to keep making ice, Yaël needed to distract some water from her own body. Which made her, by the time the glass shattered into pieces, dehydrated, cold and exhausted. 

Yaël expected to be smacked by a pile of falling glass so she bowed and put her arm in front of her face, but it never came. When she looked up, there was no glass, not even a splinter. It looked like there had never been a glass cage in the middle of the woods. 

“Oh shit,” Yaël mumbled, she looked around while rubbing her sore hands and could finally breathe again. 

“Told you,” the black-haired man said proudly from behind her. But she didn’t hear him. There was another man, she just saw him when she turned around to search for any sign of the cage that had just caved in. He was sitting on the chair Cap sat in last time in her dream, when he was guarding her. 

So it seemed this man was guarding her too, but he didn’t notice the missing cage, like it was still there, like Yaël never even used her powers. He just sat there, frowning at the screen of his tablet. It reminded Yaël to her last dream, when Cap didn’t notice the rain. Maybe her memories overlaid in this dream-world, but it was freaking confusing her. What parts of this dream belonged together? The man had dark hair, a goatee and dark eyes. His knee went up and down nervously.

Yaël heard something to her right and saw… another man. Great. He looked like a professor that needed a big coffee. He had a stubble, like he hadn’t shaved in a few days. His brown eyes looked tired and his hair was turning grey. 

Yaël thought she saw something move to her left this time. She immediately knew who it was: the read-haired woman. She had seen her in the memory of Steve she had during the session with X. The professor also had shown Yaël a picture of the redhead. The woman looked at her nails for a moment and then crossed her arms. She shone out arrogance, but it made her look kind of badass. 

Yaël scratched her head, she was a bit surprised. “Why are there suddenly so many of you?” 

Everyone looked up, a bit confused, except for the cloaked man. He was the only one who reacted. 

“We are all different paths, different memories you can chose to follow. You can choose who you want to follow tonight.” 

Somewhere Yaël heard knocking. 

“Will everyone come back next time after I followed someone in this dream?” 

“I’m not sure… but…” The man looked confused and stared to the sky, like he was searching for something. Did Yaël just hear her name somewhere? He looked back at her and threw her a sad smile. Yaël frowned at him, blinked and when she opened her eyes, she was staring at the ceiling. For a second, Yaël felt dizzy from the sudden change. 

“YAËL, GET UP AND OPEN THA DOOOOOR!” she heard a familiar voice yell from the hallway, crawled out of her bed and stumbled towards the door. “Yaël, sweet muffinpoodle!” Wade said as she opened the door. He immediately hugged her, but he hadn’t grown back to his full height, so he planted his face between her breasts. Yaël somehow had the feeling he had planned that, as he didn’t retract for a few seconds. 

“Has your brain been ripped out too?” Yaël growled as she walked backwards into her apartment and shut her door while Wades face was still planted against her chest. Wade mumbled something. “What?” 

As he finally let her go, he said “I just missed you!” 

“Is that why you’re so early?” 

“My legs suddenly had a growth spurt.” He grinned. “Oh, and I brought you something, because your hair really looks like shit…” he mumbled while digging into his ninja-turtles bag. 

“Thanks,” Yaël answered sarcastically “I haven’t had any money to take care of it.” Wade was right. Yaëls blue hair was turning lighter and lighter and her darker hair started showing again at the roots. 

Wade finally found what he was looking for: a bottle of hair dye. He raised his hand, holding the bottle, with full glory. Yaël raised an eyebrow. 

“Wade… you bought purple dye,” she stated. Wade nodded enthusiastic.

“Cool ammiright?” 

“My hair is blue,” she continued.

“Yaël, sometimes you need some change.” 

“Do you see how much hair I have? You can’t do it all with one small bottle of paint!” 

“Oh…” Wade looked a bit disappointed at his bottle. Then he looked back at her with a wide grin “Let me try it!” 

“No.”

“We can binge-watch a series while I’m taking care of you. I have,“he started digging in his backpack again and pulled out some DVD’s, “Grey’s Anatomy, Supernatural or Rick and Morty!”

A few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and Supernatural later, Yaël stepped into the shower to rinse her hair. When she got back out and dried it with a hairdryer, she grinned widely. Wade somehow managed to make the purple blend into the blue, so her hair was half-purple and half-blue. At some random places, the purple stood out more and on other places, blue, but Yaël thought it looked pretty cool for being an experiment. 

Wades eyes shone like the eyes of a little girl when she stepped out of the bathroom. He was almost back at his normal length, Yaël noticed as he stood up. 

“You need a cute name, like the characters from My Little Pony! Because girl, you look like an adorable, tasty cupcake.” He said while he was checking her hair.

“Are you flirting with me?” Yaël wiggled her eyebrows and smirked. 

“What?! Hell no! Eew. My heart belongs to Parker and Parker only, girl.” Wade saved himself with some arrogance. “By the way… I’m going to invite Peter to join us this evening,” he added quickly. Yaël rolled her eyes. 

“Oh, poor boy…” she mumbled.

“Yeah, so maybe you should put on some clothes,” Wade told her. Yaël looked down. She was still walking around with only a towel bound around her body from getting out of the shower. 

“What? Are you afraid Peter will be attracted to me instead of you?” Oh, Yaël loved teasing her raisin-friend. 

Yaël got herself dressed and a few hours later, after ordering some pizza, she heard a knock on the door. 

“You go,” she said as she pointed at Wade “You invited this innocent soul, now you let him in, nah!” Wade jumped up and danced towards the door. Yaël put out the TV . She had seen enough of hospitals and the Winchester for today. 

“Parker and pizza, best combination ever!” Wade joked, but he didn’t get a smile back. Instead, the teenager looked somewhat grumpy. He probably wanted to fill his evening differently, but he was trapped by Wade now. Peter dropped the pizza boxes on a small table that was meant as a post-table, but Yaël never got any mail, so it was permanently empty. 

She saw the teenager stare at her hair while mumbling something to Wade about bringing his own pizza so he’d have something to eat if Wade started to probe him.

“You like it?” Yaël asked after Wade reacted fake-insulted by bringing his hand to his mouth. 

“It’s artsy,” Peter answered a bit doubtful. He looked so uncomfortable that Yaël automatically threw him a wide grin. She stood up to get her box of pizza and planted her butt on the couch again with her feet on the small table in front of her. 

“Hey, Petey, think fast!” Yaël looked up to Wade, who had yelled, while nibbling on her pizza. She was trying her best to keep the cheese out of her hair. 

There he stood with a cheeky, almost evil-looking grin on his face and… her plates in his hands, which he was already throwing at Peter. What the actual f-  
HER PLATES! 

Yaël dropped her pizza and made a movement with her hands. This way, she used air to make the plates fly over Peter instead of flying right in his face. The boy also seemed to have massive reflexes as he jumped back from the plates and before Yaël even noticed Wade pulled out a gun, Peter already had jumped up. Wade started shooting at the boy’s feet and out of reflex, Yaël stomped her feet. The tiles of her floor flew into the air. Using her powers, Yaël built a wall with the tiles. This way, she used it as a shield for her and Parker.

Wade lost his senses, Yaël was sure about that. Why would that freaking psycho start shooting at this boy?! With a few steps, Yaël put herself and her shield in front of Peter. Yaël checked on the teen, hoping he wasn’t hurt. Her mouth fell open and she stared at him, hanging on a wall like he pasted his hands and feet to it. 

Okay, so, whatever. Peter Parker is a sixteen years old boy who can climb and stick to walls. Yaël surely didn’t saw that coming, but that was the least of her worries at that moment. She focused back on Wade. 

While she was still keeping her wall of tiles up with her hand, she simply stared at Wade, more specifically at the hand that was shooting around and aimed with her other hand. 

“Hey!” Wade yelled as his hand froze. Yaël was perfectly capable of steering this power without using her hands, but using them was easier and made her more in control of her powers. Fire and water she could steer the smoothest. She could use these with just a blink of her eyes. Earth or stone was a bit harder, because of being a literal hard element. With this element, she always needed to move a limb as it felt heavy to manipulate this element. But air… that was a complete shit-element. Whatever she did with it, it always ended with a struggle, a fail or tiredness. 

So after using air to change the course of the plates a bit so they wouldn’t fly into Peter’s face (she couldn’t even steer them to softly land on a table or shoot them back or anything), and after using it together with earth to make a shield for so long, she felt completely drained. She was trying her utter best to land the tiles back on their place, but some of them just fell and clattered against the floor, so she just let go of the air and fixed them quickly by using her earth-powers. 

Peter and Wade didn’t even notice her clumsiness, because while struggling with the tiles, Yaël had already frozen Wade up to his neck without even noticing it. Yup, that’s exactly why Fury said she wasn’t trained enough. She quickly stopped the freezing procedure. Wade looked at her sheepishly, but she didn’t feel sorry. 

Who did this guy think he was, tossing her plates around and shooting holes in her floor like that? Maybe Fury should pay him less after this act of insanity. 

“What the hell is going on?!” she barked at him. She might be exhausted after trying to use her air-powers, but this man made her freaking rage! Yaël really didn’t have the money to buy new plates or to pay Peter’s hospital bills if he’d get hurt. 

“Well, he’s Spider-Man, of course!” Wade said it like it was an obvious fact, like those words would justify his actions. Well, Wade could go screw himself. 

“So, what? You just decide to throw my plates and start shooting at my floor to proof that this guy can swing from one building to another? There are other ways to do that, Wade!” Yaël barked, Wade flinched a bit.

Yaël was still giving Wade a death-glare as Peter asked: “I just want to know how you figured it out?” He looked confused and a bit stressed out. Was the Spider-Man-thing supposed to be a secret? Yaël understood, she didn’t want the whole world to know what she was capable of either. And Wade just gave away this boy’s biggest secret. 

“I just know things; how’s MJ by the way?” Wade asked casually. He was way too relaxed for someone who just almost got frozen to death. On the other hand, Yaël knew she couldn’t have killed him. But right now, she wished she hadn’t stopped freezing him, so his head would be frozen too, because he didn’t look sorry at all.

“Who’s MJ?” Peter asked. 

“Oh, you haven’t met her yet? Come on, I want pizza. Yaël, get me out of here!” He tried to wiggle his way out of the ice, but that was impossible. He’d have to wait until Yaël freed him or until the ice was melted. 

And Yaël wasn’t going to help him. She took her box back from the table and sat down in her sofa again, signing at Peter to follow her. While they were eating, Wade made enough noise to talk for the three of them. He whined about his pizza and being hungry. 

If she could just call Steve and rage about this new friend to him, because Wade surely still was her friend. Yaël was sure she’d find it hilarious tomorrow. And Wade was her only friend at this point. Was Peter a friend? Does kidnapping someone make you friends? Well, if Peter wanted to leave, he could, Yaël wouldn’t stop him. But he stayed, which made her kind of glad, because she didn’t want him, the only normal guy in her company right now, to reject her. 

Yet, having a Steve would be fun too. He’d be so mad at Wade, well, he would’ve preached to the psycho until Wade would’ve fallen asleep or something. But right now, her dear friend still thought she was dead… 

As Wade was still being grumpy about his pizza and rambled just to annoy them, Yaël took a look at Peter. He was just staring at the wall with glassy eyes, while eating his pizza. 

“There’s something on your mind,” Yaël noticed. Oh, did she just say that out loud? Maybe she shouldn’t have said that, she didn’t want to break into the guy’s privacy. She saw Peter turn a bit in his seat, he looked so extremely uncomfortable that Yaël wanted to tell him he could ignore her statement, but he answered instead. 

“I-I just don’t know you guys. Nobody’s supposed to know, but yet here we are, Wanda knows, you know. I wonder who else does.” Who’s Wanda? Whatever, Yaël wasn’t supposed to know this boy’s secret and now she did, thanks to dickhead Wade. 

“There’s that old guy in the restaurant, with his moustache!” Dickhead Wade pointed out. Yaël cocked her eyebrow and glanced at him as a sign that he should shut up with his weird answers that no one understood. And then she got an idea, a way to make Peter feel better.

“You know, they send this idiot to me because they figured I need friends?” Yaël pointed with her thumb to Wade, who acted like he was offended, but nobody cared.

“Who are they?” Peter asked friendly. 

“Two men, they introduced themselves as Professor X and Nick Fury.”

Peter’s eyes grew bigger “No way! You know Nick Fury and Professor X?” First,he spoke a bit louder and faster out of excitement, but then… he started rattling.

“Everybody’s heard of them, Nick Fury is like the most secretive guy-“

And he’s a complete ass, Yaël thought, but she didn’t interrupt Peter 

“-we even thought him dead for long until he showed himself again during that Ultron-disaster! But Professor X! Man what’s it like, having him in your head?”

“Well,” Yaël scratched her head “It’s weird, man. He helps me remembering stuff by triggering my memories or something like that.” Peter lifts an eyebrow to Yaël, but it was Wade who explained it to him. 

“Her brain’s scrambled and she doesn’t remember a thing.” She remembered Steve, but he might not remember her anymore, she thought sadly. 

“I just figured out my dad wasn’t really my dad, and there’s a slight possibility that my real dad is still alive, and now I’m waiting for the DNA results,” Peter suddenly said. Did he say it to make her feel better about her mind-error?

Somehow, Yaël had the feeling that this boy couldn’t talk about this problem to anyone. It must be so damn frustrating, waiting to find out who really is your dad. But on the other hand, the way he spoke sounded like the man who had raised him, had died. So maybe, just maybe, if he finds his real dad, the man can be his new father figure.

Yaël sometimes missed someone like that, or someone like a big brother, like when she had troubles with the drains, or when she didn’t know what to read or what to play on her cello. Yeah, it must be great to have someone to fall back to. 

But Yaël wasn’t naïve, she knew that if Peter figured out who his real das was, it still didn’t mean the man would take care of him or even want to know him. This man wouldn’t make Peter’s life all rainbows and cupcakes, per se. But when Yaël looked at his young face with eyes that show that the boy has already been through a lot, she could only be optimistic for him. 

“Wow, but if he’s your dad, that’s kind of great, right?” she asked with a big smile. But Peter just shrugged. 

“I’m not sure I want to know the answer to it,” he answered. Then he stood up, whiping his pants so that he was clean from pizza-crumbs. He was ready to leave, Yaël noticed, as she saw him looking around for his backpack. 

“Well, if you want a daddy so badly, you can call me ‘dad’. Daddy Deadpool, wouldn’t that be great?” Wade suddenly said with a grin. Yaël sarcastically slapped her forehead after that. She did her best to keep her face straight, because she didn’t want to give Wade the pleasure to see her laugh at his dumb joke. Wade was still punished for being an aggressive dick, after all. 

But Parked seemed shocked. Yaël had thought the boy would be used by Wades jokes by now. The boy seemed like he was boiling. 

“Deadpool?!” He groaned. “Out of all people that have to stalk me, it has to be the one who would be able to send me to an early grave.” Oh, so that was his problem. 

“Hey, I take that as an insult!” Wade shouted back. But Peter just ignored him with a hard face. 

Oh, boy. Yaël needed to find something to distract these two before they’d kill each other. Not that Deadpool was able to move, nor did Peter look like someone who easily killed people. 

“Hehe, funny, you both have superhero names!” Yaël muttered. Wow, nice work, Yaël, she thought sarcastically. Peter threw her a questioning glance and it was Wade, of course, who got distracted immediately. 

“Yeah, cool, right? We should team up, become Spideypool!” 

Peter shook his head “No way, are you even a hero?” 

“And what if she joins us?” Wade nodded to Yaël, ignoring Peter’s biting question, still frozen like a popsicle. Yaël saw the curiosity in Peter’s eyes as he turned to her, also a bit distracted now, just a bit. 

“Well, what’s your, eh, other name?” he asked. 

“I don’t have one.” Yaël said. She didn’t want some kind of special name either. 

“Why not?” Peter lifted an eyebrow. 

“I’m not a hero, Peter. I work in gardens and play cello on the streets.”

“But you can be one, with powers like yours!” What could Yaël say? That she didn’t feel like a person to look up to? That she had the feeling she has done some horrible things in her past? She was no example, no hero. Yaël couldn’t even fully control her own powers. 

“-the Mighty Sorceress, or The Element, or maybe The Rainbow Pony, or…” Wade’s chatter about finding a fitting name for Yaël pulled her out of her thoughts. Peter was even smiling a bit. What a weird group of friends have they created.Yaël grinned. Yes, Peter clearly had become a friend.

 

“You pay me new plates!” she growled at Wade as soon as Peter had left. She wasn’t finished with Wade just yet. It surprised her that nobody came knocking on her door yet to check if she was still alive after all the noise of gunshots and shattering plates. But she guessed everyone just minded their own business in this building.  
They hadn’t come on between when they heard her neighbor had fought about drugs with a dealer in the hallway, either. Luckily, only a few of Wade’s shots got through the floor, but Yaël didn’t know how to explain this all to Fury. He’d be so pissed. 

Wade nodded quickly. “Yes, my German butterfly, I’ll buy you the fanciest plates ever made.” He answered her demand with some fear in his eyes. Yaël wasn’t sure if he was acting or not, but she didn’t care.  
 


	4. Chapter 4

Yaël walked into her apartment, turned on the light and put her cello back on its place. It was Sunday, so she had no gardens to tend today. As a compensation for the lost income, she had been playing on the streets all morning.

Yaël took a glass of water, sat down and counted the money she had earned. For some reason, Nothing Else Matters from Metallica was always the most popular song, while Era was way less loved. Not that Yaël has a problem with playing Metallica, Wade had told her to do so, but her personal taste went to Era more. She made the most money out of Nothing Else Matters and when she played it, there always gathered a small crowd around her. Though, Yaël knew for sure that the songs she played would sound way better if there was more than just one cello playing. If Yaël just knew someone who played this instrument too, she'd be able to play so much more epic stuff.

“Okay, let’s do the dishes…” she mumbled to herself as she put away her wallet. Wade may have broken all of her plates but her glasses were still alive and kicking… and filthy from the evening before. Yaël opened the tap and put it on hot. Then she walked to her little radio and plugged her phone to it. There was this song she wanted to learn to play somehow, also one of Wade’s. Where was it? She kept scrolling.

“Aha, here you are!” Was she talking to her phone now? Whatever. Yaël pressed play and Aerials from System of a Down started to play. Now, she had no idea yet how she’d learn to play it, but listening to it already gave her a few ideas.

Then she walked back to her sink and put her hands in the water to test if it wasn’t too hot. She frowned. “You have to be shitting me!” she growled. The water was still cold. Yaël ran to the shower and tested the water there. Cold. Oh, she was so going to call Fury! She had to call him anyways to hear if she finally could contact Steve, because she still got no news from X nor Fury about that.

She dialed Fury’s number and started raging as soon as she heard the cracking of someone picking up.

“HOW DO YOU EVEN DARE, I NEED WARM WATER, I KNOW I CAN WARM IT MYSELF BUT WHY DO I NEED TO DO THAT?! THAT’S WHAT BOILERS AND SHIT ARE FOR! I DIDN’T EVEN DO ANYTHING LAST NIGHT, WADE WENT CRAZY, NOT ME!” she left the flying tiles-part out, of course.

“I-I’m sorry, this is Mr. Fury’s assistant…” Oh he did not… 

“DID THAT IMBECIL GIVE YOU THE PHONE AS SOON AS HE SAW I WAS CALLING HIM!?” Weak!

“N-no-“

“HOLY FUCKING COW, TELL HIM TO GO SCREW HIMSELF!” And with that, Yaël hung up.

But this girl had a little problem with impulses. In her anger, because she wasn’t finished with raging just yet, she called another number. As soon as someone picked up without saying anything, Yaël calmed down. Rage made place for shame as she didn’t dare to say a word anymore. She almost hung up again, but X started talking.

“ _Yaël, what’s wrong?”_ Oh, god… what was she doing?

“Eh, hi professor.”

“ _Hello, Yaël,”_ he answered calmly.

“I have a little problem, no biggie, rather smallie…”

“ _Yes_?”

“I… have no warm water, which I can fix, of course, with my powers, you know… but I was a bit, eh, annoyed.”

“ _Well, that’s rather… uncomfortable, isn’t it?_ ” he didn’t sound annoyed or anything by her the useless call. Nor did he laugh with her. Yaël sighed.

“Yes, a bit, sir.”

“ _Can’t you pay for this?_ ”

“I don’t have enough money, as Fury keeps reducing the money I get and gardening and playing cello doesn’t bring up much. Not to sound greedy, of course, I’m grateful for what I get, but…”

“ _He holds back your money?”_ X sounds a bit appalled at that. Take that, Fury-kiss-my-ass!

“Yes.”

“ _Why_?”

“I think to make me control my impulses more, like this phone call, for instance.”

 _“That’s a bit unfair, isn’t it? As being impulsive seems to be one of your character traits.”_ Touché.

“But, it’s okay, I’ll manage! Sorry for bothering you, mister X.” Yaël wanted to stop whining to this man, but his last words, before hanging up, made her feel warmer than ever.

“ _No, Yaël, you should ‘bother’ me more frequently_.”

Her smile quickly faded away again, as she discovered that she forgot to ask X about Steve. _Goddammit, Yaël_ , she thought.

 

 

X called her back the next day to tell her that he was going to discuss her situation with Fury immediately, so it’d be fixed as soon as possible. But there was a flaw in X’s plan.

Yaël needed to warm her water, so she cooled off. If she wanted to take a warm shower, she couldn’t enjoy it because her body temperature lowered itself. So, of course, Yaël got a cold. Working in gardens with a cooled-down body didn’t help her cold either.

The next few days, after X’s phone call, Yaël lived in pure coldness. The sneezing, coughing and shivering drove her nuts.

So when someone knocked on the door of her apartment, Yaël was rolled into a blanket, watching series, drinking a small glass of whiskey. She hoped the liquid would make her feel warm. Yaël growled as she heard the knock and rolled herself back out of her blanket.

“Hi,” Peter waved a bit awkwardly as soon as Yaël opened the door. “Wade texted me to come and get you. We’re going to the park.”

Yaël was a bit surprised to see Peter, so her brain malfunctioned for a second. The cold and the whiskey surely didn’t help, even though she only had one glass. “P-parker, I mean park, is, eh, yay! But Mc Dreamy just died, so I’m mourning… Hey, wait, are you stalking me?”

Peter looked at her like he was trying to figure out what she just had said. Yaël sneezed and cleaned her nose with a tissue. “You and Wade were the ones who started stalking me in the first place!” was Peter’s reply. He didn’t seem annoyed, he just wanted to clear the stalking-issue out.

“Yeah, yeah, what ev’s, Spidey,” Yaël shrugged.

“So, are you coming or what?”

“But Mc Dreamy-“

“I think you can use some fresh air.”

“He died-“

“And some sunlight. It’s freezing in here. Come on.”

Peter was very persuasive. He won; he had brought her outside. And even though it was a warm day, as warm as January could get, and Yaël could feel the rays of the sun touching her through her thick sweater, she needed some time to warm back up. It felt like the cold got stuck in her bones. Peter noticed, so he grabbed his sweater out of his backpack and handed it to Yaël. She replied with another sneeze and a muffled “Thank you…” as she cleaned her nose. When she was done, she threw him a wide smile.

“So, how were the DNA-results? You got them, right?” Yaël asked Peter as they walked into the park. She remembered him talking about it during the pizza-night. Peter nodded, he looked a bit nervous.

“Yeah, the guy is my dad, alright…”

“Cool, did you meet him already? Is he kind?”

“Eh, I guess, he’s kinda cool…Yaël, you won’t believe this but I swear it’s true. Tony Stark is my father.” Peter looked at her, seemingly expecting her to freak out. It was hard to explain, the name sounded familiar, but Yaël couldn’t remember why. So Yaël dug and dug into her memories, which weren’t a lot to dig through.

“Sorry, man, I don’t know who that is.” Although it had been his unintended plan to shock her, she had the feeling she shocked him more for some reason. Yaël saw Peter’s eyes grow big and his mouth fall open a bit.

“Tony Stark, lady and gentleman, is _the one_ and only Iron Man,” Yaël jumped a little as Wade suddenly interrupted their conversation. Where had he been hiding all this time? Yaël looked around confusedly. Did he just pop up or had he been waiting in a tree?

“How could you _not_ know him? The guy owns pretty much everything here, comes on the news practically every day.” Well, it still didn’t ring a bell and there was a reason for that.

“Ah well, X and Fury told me not to watch the news,” mostly Fury, “fearing it might trouble my mind, or whatever their crappy excuse was to keep me out of the world…”

No one had an answer to that. Yaël understood, it was kind of weird that she knew so little about the world. They were walking up to a pond in the middle of the park.

“So you want to get to know your daddy, Peter?” Wade randomly asked while he started digging into his backpack and pulled out a bag filled with bread. Yaël raised her eyebrow. What the hell was Wade planning to do?

“Well, I don’t know… For now, I’d rather he didn’t know, but on the other hand I really _do_ want to get to know him. I want to know who he is before I come sending him an ‘it’s a boy!’ card, you see?” Peter answered. Yaël nodded, while she saw Wade walking up to the pond and started throwing crumbs to the ducks. As soon as the ducks noticed him, they swim up to him, happily quacking and diving for the bread. Wade just became the god of the duckies.

This man was completely crazy, but Yaël liked him that way.

Yaël turned back to Peter. “How do you plan to get to know him?” she asked. Peter’s story was kind of sensational. But she didn’t want to disrespect him, because for Peter it seemed to be only stressful, so she didn’t show him how excited she was.

“I don’t know!” he grumbled, obviously frustrated “I’ve been breaking my head about this, but I just can’t get to a simple plan.” Yaël saw Peter frown in annoyance as he kicked against a stone, which flew into the pond.

“Hey!” Wade yelled as his army of ducks swam off panicky, shocked by the stone. Yaël and Peter simply ignored him.

Peter talked and talked. It was obvious that he needed someone to spill his heart to. And all Yaël could do was listen and feed the ducks when Wade gave her some bread to throw into the water. Peter had something normal, domestic and that was exactly what Yaël liked about him.

Okay, yes, he was the one and only Spider-Man, which isn’t normal at all, but he was also just a normal teenager with normal problems. He wasn’t arrogant for being some kind of superhero, or for being over-intellectual.

Yaël discovered that he had a high-functioning brain, as he started talking about making a choice between electrical engineering or biochemistry. As Yaël didn’t really know what these two words even meant, she started asking herself if she wasn’t just dumb. Maybe she never even went to school and maybe Peter was just a mainstream boy. But it didn’t matter, she told herself. Even if Peter was just a mainstream teenager, he’d always be the smartest geek to her.

Peter’s problem obviously was that he needed someone to give him a clear answer. It was kind of cute actually and it proved once more that he was just a normal person.  He couldn’t choose between the two fields, he liked the both of them but… if he’d chose electrical engineering, he’d be able to do a scholarship in Stark Tower. Peter already talked to Mr Stark for an internship, so Yaël didn’t really get what was holding him back. With some luck, he’d somewhat get to know his dad.

So Yaël told him that he should do that, and Peter smiled. It was clearly the answer he needed.

“I would have to sign up for the interview, then. Have another talk with Mr. Stark to get the job…I wonder what Wanda would say about this?” Yaël nodded.

Who was Wanda? Was she his girlfriend? Ooooh! Then why hadn’t _she_ told him to take the internship? Wade started to talk to Peter about the divorce between a pepper (?) and Stark, or something like that. Yaël wasn’t really listening to it, she wondered why Peter hadn’t said anything about a girlfriend before.

“Who’s Wanda?” she asked before she knew it.

“Oh,” Peter answered “she’s one of the new Avengers, telepathic and telekinetic and all, helped me getting Mr. Stark’s blood for the DNA-test a while back…I guess she’s a friend.” Peter shrugged, like having a telepathic/telekinetic friend is as normal as eating cereals for breakfast. But, it was a girl…Yaël had an idea.

“Well, any friend of yours can be a friend of ours. She should hang with us, maybe? I could use another girl in this group filled with testosterone,” Yaël laughed. Yes, a girl to do a bit girlie stuff with. Not like painting nails, but like watching series. It was all fun and games with Wade, but it would be different with another girl.

Watching series… wait, Yaël almost forgot! “Wade! Mc Dreamy died! What the actual f-“

“HOLY LACTOSE-INTOLLERANT COW, YAËL! DON’T SPOIL EVERYTHING!” Wade yelled a bit hysterical.

“Sorry! I couldn’t hold it back anymore!” Yaël answered over-dramatic. She forgot Peter for a second, who tried to get her attention, but she didn’t notice. “And the Winchesters are in trouble again…”

“Don’t you dare spoiling it!”

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion. As a reflection, Yaël checked on her friends. Peter had disappeared, which gave her an immediate heart-attack. He might be Spider-Man, but he’s also a young guy who can die as easily as any human. Right? Or made the Spider-stuff him immortal? Yaël should research that later.

She coughed as soon as the smoke found its way into her nose.

“Gotta go! Stay safe, girlie,” Wade said as he ran off into the smoke.

Well, at least _he_ couldn’t die, Yaël thought as she ran around looking for Peter. Yaël almost fell down as she felt something big fly just over her head, almost touching her. It was a man with giant metal wings, wearing some kind of red goggles. He disappeared in the smoke in front of her. Right, so the fight was in that direction. Yaël ran forward, maybe Peter was there too, maybe she could help. Somewhere, someone grunted and splashed in the water. As soon as Yaël could make out who it was, through the smoke, she started sprinting. Some creepy, shiny person-thing with pointy ears was trying to drown Peter, who was in his Spider-Man suit, in the pond.

Yaël started making contact with the water to attack the green weirdo as she saw someone else sprint towards Peter too. It was a blond, shorthaired man with a bow lifted in his hands, ready to shoot.

“Falcon, the Goblin!” he yelled at the guy with the wings, then he put his hands in the air and made a pull-sign. The winged-dude, Falcon, got there first and pulled the attacker, the Goblin, out of the water. They started struggling in the air, which made Falcon drop his target. Yaël looked at the man with the bow, who fished Peter out of the water. Then she saw the Goblin fall on the ground, jump up and running off.

Yaël was still running, but this time away from Peter. She made some sort of string out of the water of the pond behind her, and steered it at the green creep. Without even a hand gesture, Yaël made the string bind itself around the ankle of the Green Goblin. He fell down and got carried over the ground as Yaël made the string pull her victim back.

Falcon picked the Goblin up again and pulled him back in the air. Yaël looked back to see what was happening to Peter. Bow-guy almost got him out of the water. Then, all of a sudden, something happened above her in the fight between Falcon and Goblin which caused a big blow. Dust flew into Yaël’s eyes. As she rubbed her eyes, cursing, she heard a weird swirling sound, getting louder and louder. Out of the blue, Yaël got knocked against the ground.

It was dark when Yaël opened her eyes a second later and she was pretty sure there was someone laying on top of her.

“Miss, can you remove those walls please?” a way too familiar voice asked her. Apparently, Yaël had built a little stone cage around them in a reflex. With just a knock of her hand against the stones, the walls crumbled down.

“Steve?!” Yaël yelped as she saw the blue eyes as soon as the walls were gone and they were back in the open air. Steve was still holding his shield above them, as protection, even though there had just been a ‘roof’, built by Yaël, above them.

The Captain didn’t move or say anything for a second, completely flabbergasted, like he was staring at a ghost. So… Fury nor X had talked to him already. Did Yaël just accidentally mess up Fury’s plans?

Then Steve finally got up, put her back on her feet, grabbed her arm and ran off to a spot a bit further, more out of the fighting-zone, pulling her behind him.

“What happened?” she asked a bit shaky from the running.

“Falcon tumbled down,” Steve answered. Yaël looked back while wobbling behind her friend. Falcon was still fighting the Goblin. Then she checked on Peter again. He laid in the grass, coughing out some water.

“Hawkeye is taking care of him.” Steve had followed Yaël’s gaze as soon as they stood still. Hawkeye… That name rang a bell… somewhere… maybe…

“You don’t remember him?” he asked when he saw her frown. Yaël shook her head.

“I don’t really remember anything. Something wiped my memories.”

“Something… Wait, you don’t even know what happened? Let me take a look at you.” It seemed like Steve finally acknowledged her presence. He grabbed her shoulders with both hands. He checked her for something, probably wounds or scars, and then he mumbled “How are you even still alive…?” He let go of her shoulders and stood there like that for a moment, frowning, thinking. Yaël decided it was best to give this man the time he needed to process this weird happening.

Someone yelled his name. Steve blinked and looked behind him.

“I have to go help them out.” He said to Yaël, already turning around. Yaël nodded, of course he had to… he was _the_ Captain. No fight could be fought without him. “Where do you live?” he asked as he put his helmet back on.

Yaël gave him her address.

“Go home. I know you’re able to defend yourself, but I just want you to be safe right now.”

“But-“

“Go!” And without another word, the blonde guy who had visited her in a few dreams, ran off again.

 

 

As Yaël walked on the streets to get to her apartment, she started freaking out a bit. Random thoughts made way into her head. Yaël had never been afraid of meeting new people, so she surely wasn’t afraid of meeting acquaintances , but this was different. Steve must’ve mourned about her, right? Well, maybe he didn’t, she didn’t want to know that. Maybe he just walked through her death smoothly. Or maybe he’d be disappointed in her for not remembering him sooner. How long had it been?

Yaël noticed the warmth coming from her apartment as she opened the door. She stood there for a second, being pulled from her thoughts. There were no more powers needed to warm her water or her rooms, all thanks to mister X.

Yaël purposely hadn’t used any fire in the park, because she already had a cold from acting like a boiler for her home. She should thank the professor, but she didn’t know how. Maybe he’d just know how grateful she was, or maybe he’d be disappointed in her, just like Steve, for not thanking him. Right when Yaël felt a bit relaxed, she started panicking again. Yaël took a sponge and started cleaning the table as she heard a knock on the door. At that point, she really wished that the old, moldy building she lived in had some sort of intercom so she’d know when someone came to visit her and who it was.

Of course Yaël did know who it was. She quickly threw the sponge back into the sink and walked to the door. There was no time for awkwardness, anger or disappointment, as soon as Yaël opened the door, Steve took her in his arms and hugged her tightly.

Yaël couldn’t help it as she chuckled and dug her face into his T-shirt. So this was how it felt again…  Yaël had a secret love for hugs. They felt way warmer than a kiss or anything, but she felt too awkward to hug someone herself. By the way, there hadn’t been many hug-able people around her lately.

As soon as Steve let go again, he pulled the door behind him shut and looked at her confusedly. “How did you even survive?”

“I, eh, this,” Yaël pointed at her head “is kind of empty. I simply don’t remember, Steve.” His confused look turned into a frown.

“Wait, what? You don’t know what happened to you?” Yaël shook her head and signed at the sofa’s. “Let’s take a seat.” This was going to be a long talk.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The right-wing conservatives think its a decision  
> And you can be cured with some treatment and religion  
> Man-made, rewiring of a pre-disposition. Playing God  
> Ahh nah, here we go  
> America the brave  
> Still fears what we don't know  
> And God loves all his children, it's somehow forgotten  
> But we paraphrase a book written 3, 500 hundred years ago  
> I don't know"
> 
> Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Same Love

“You want something to drink?” she asked him kindly.

“Yes, well, a water would be great, thank you.” Steve must be thirsty after that fight in the park, so Yaël searched for the biggest glass she had, opened the tap and let the water flow into the glass. “Yaël, do you even know how long you were gone?”

Steve was still looking a bit confused. She shook her head again “I have no clue actually. It surely must be a few months with all the revalidation and such.”

“You’ve been… _dead_ for a year!” What the hell?! A whole year? She knew she had been in a coma, but no one ever told her how long she had been out.

The first thing she did as she woke up was weeks of mental and physical exercises. They had put her in a very lonely department, god knows if she even had been in a hospital or not, she surely didn’t know. The only thing she saw there were white walls, doctors and professors. There were no other patients, no one. After that, X and Fury straightly put her in the apartment and left her here, kind of.

Steve stared at the tap, then looked back at Yaël. Without noticing it, Yaël had walked back a few steps towards Steve. She had left the sink, but unknowingly kept filling Steve’s glass by steering a string of water from the tap into his glass.

“Now, I see that’s a shock to you,” he states. Steve wasn’t surprised or impressed by her powers. He was used to it as she already had a few emotional burst outs around him. Or, like now, the powers sometimes unknowingly crept up, like they were an extra limb or anything, Steve had seen it all.

Yaël sat down and gave Steve his glass. It was quiet for a moment as he stared at her. Not in a creepy way, but it was clear that he was looking for answers.

“How did you survive it? Without even a scar?” he asked her.

“Steve, I don’t even know _what_ I survived,” Yaël sighed. She felt stupid, like her brain made constant errors.

“Well, you’ve been smashed down by the hulk…” That should’ve surprised her, she saw it on Steve’s face, but all Yaël could think about was her broken brain.

“The what?” she asked. The Cap took his phone, one of these old flip-open pieces.

“Wait…this should work, I hope… ” he said as he pressed buttons on the small machine. Then he turned the screen towards Yaël. “Look.”

Yaël saw the picture of a huge, green, muscular, eh, _man_? Monster? Whatever it was, it looked like trouble. “That thing knocked me out?!”

Steve nodded. Okay, so it was actually no wonder she had been out for such a long time. How the hell did she survive that?! She should’ve been dead! Or at least scarred for life!

Steve noticed that Yaël had no answers, herself, so he asked her what she had been doing the whole year when she was gone and she told him everything. Yaël told him about the coma, about the tests, about the bullshit with Fury and her respect for X.

When she talked about meeting Wade, Steve interrupted her. Something what he usually wouldn’t do. 

“Wait, are we talking about _the_ Wade Wilson? Deadpool?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re friends with him? How is he? Everybody keeps on telling me he’s insufferable?” Steve suddenly looked a bit worried.

“A bit,” Yaël admitted, “but I really needed a friend and he simply walked into my apartment.”

Steve then shrugs. “I personally never had any trouble with him, but if I need to believe what the others tell me, you should better be a bit careful around him,” he jokes. Yaël wanted to say that he wasn’t her father so he shouldn’t judge her friends so badly based on what he’s heard, but she kept her mouth shut.

She was way too happy to have Steve back, so she decided to tell him about Peter, to change the subject.

“And this Peter, what is he like?” Steve asked curiously, probably to make sure Yaël hadn’t befriended two psychos.

“Oh, he’s a real smarty! He was even doubting to study electrical engineering or biochemistry.”

“And what did you tell him to do?” Steve smiled.

“The first one!” Yaël decided to leave Peter’s daddy issues out of the conversation, that was too personal, and Steve had no need for that info.

“Yaël, do you even know what these two words mean?  Do you even know what these two curriculums would look like?” His smile turned into a wide grin. Guess he was right, who was she to counsel Peter with his choices?

“No, do you?” she asked him to pay him back. Steve wiggled his hand, a sign to say that he knew a bit about it, but not enough to explain it to her. They both fell into laughter.

“So, what’s new in your life after all these months?” Yaël asked after she wiped away a few joyful tears. By just asking that simple question, it seemed like she just crushed his good mood. His smile quickly faded. Suddenly, Steve looked ten years older, yet he still tried to look happy…and failed.

“Not much,” he mumbled. Yaël lifted her eyebrow.

“Really?” she asks “Because what I see is one miserable looking man.”

“Yeah, really,” he said, not credible at all. Steve took another sip of his glass and stared at the wall. He was thinking about something, so Yaël decided to let him be for a moment.

 

“I have a problem.”

Yaël had been making miniature waves in her glass of water for a few minutes when Steve spoke again. She looked back to him. It had to be a huge problem, shown by his sudden weird behavior. Did she have to worry about something?

“What’s up, Cap?” she asked. Did somebody die while she was out? Would that mean that Yaël would never get to know this person again?

“I think…I have feelings for someone.” Yaël’s heart jumped, in a good way. This was great news! Why would Cap be so down about that?

“Cool! Is she cute? Who is she? Do I know her?” Yaël couldn’t hide her grin.

“Well, that’s actually the problem. It- he, he’s no _her_ …”

“Okay, so?” He was in love with a man, that didn’t make any difference to her. But she forgot for a second where Steve came from, from which period. Steve’s eyes grew a bit darker, she hadn’t seen those blue eyes in this way many times.

“ _So_?! Really?” he grunted “It’s not normal, Yaël!”

“Yes, it is,” she answered him stubbornly.

“I don’t know what to do… How do I fix this? How do I fix myself?” Steve sounded frustrated.

“Does he like you back?” Yaël asked.

“I don’t know…maybe. But what does it matter? It’s not how it’s supposed to be!”

“You’re living in the twenty-first century, Steve. It doesn’t matter anymore who you’re in love with, as long as that person is a legal adult. Let the past go. I know you grew up going to church and that you still do a small prayer in your head every time you start eating dinner. I know that you had to ramble your prayers before you could sit down at school and I know you still have a cross hanging somewhere hidden in your room. But don’t you think you’ve got the whole message wrong?” Yaël rattled.

“What do you mean?” he clenched his jaws and seemed to try his best not to ball his hands into fists. Yaël was playing on a sensitive string.

“I think your God wants humanity to learn how to love. Why would he disapprove whatever kind of love you’re feeling?” Steve’s eyes grew big and turned a bit red. He looked away. When he looked back at her, the redness was gone again.

“What do I do?”

“Talk to him, I guess. I don’t think you’re able to hide your feelings, are you?”

He mumbled something that sounded like: “If I have to…”

“No, you don’t have to hide. Who is this unicorn of yours anyway?”

Steve hesitated before he said it. “It’s Tony…”

He had to be kidding her, not that Tony again.

“Tony Stark?”

“Yes, do you remember him?” he looked a bit hopeful.

“No,” she answered a bit dryly. That Tony guy was following her around. First with Peter, now with Steve. What’s up with that guy? Yaël was sure she had to meet him, he must be extremely handsome and good-hearted as everyone seemed to like him somehow.

“I think you’ll have to repeat this preach you just gave me every now and then…” Steve pulled Yaël out of her thoughts.

Of course, Steve felt insecure about it. This was not how he was raised, or not how he was brainwashed by the church or whatever. She was sure about the good morality coming from Catholicism, but the love-part was one of the church’s biggest flaws, according to her.

“Yeah, sure, Steve,” she threw him her kindest smile and went with her hand through his hair. The guy had such amazing hair. “Just come to talk with me frequently so you don’t burst out against Tony, I don’t want you to fuck this up.”

Steve threw her his _language_ -face and then sighed.

“I just need to believe that I’m not a failure every Sunday morning.” He mumbled as he unwittingly leaned his head more against her hand, which pointed out that he was exhausted. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so physical. She kept going through his hair until she heard his breathing even out into a calm, regular pace.

THE Captain America just fell asleep in her sofa. It wasn’t the first time, though. He used to sleep in her room every now and then, back when she lived in the compound. Yes, she remembered that, all of a sudden. She used to live in the compound, with Steve and…crap.

Well, at least she remembered the compound. Yaël gently put Steve on his side, with his head on a pillow she got out of her bed. Then she dug out a blanket from her closet and put it over him. He’d do the same for her, she thought as she put on her pajamas.

It didn’t take her too long to fall asleep herself.

 

 

The next day, Yaël woke up by noises coming from the kitchen. Did someone break in again? Anyone could simply walk into the building and picking a lock wasn’t exactly something someone needed to study for. She jumped out of bed and opened her bedroom door as silently as possible.

Yaël recognized the tall blonde guy immediately, slowly remembering that Steve had fallen asleep in her sofa last night.

“Yaël, are you wearing clothes?” Steve asked without even turning around or looking up. He was baking some eggs.

“Maybe…” she mumbled as she looked down. Okay, so she was only wearing a T-shirt and panties. Normally she’d walk around like that, but with Steve being a prude, she decided to look for some real clothes.

While jumping to pull up her pants, she stumbled over her alarm clock. How much time did she have left before she had to leave for work? Oh, it was around seven am, so she still had an hour, good!

Yaël was walking towards the bathroom as Steve stuck out his arm to stop her.

“Why don’t you try getting your brush by using your powers?” he said casually while he was still baking. A string of water was already bringing her brush before the guy could even look up.

Yaël took the brush while smirking at Steve. He was always thinking about training her in all possible ways.

“Okay,” he said slowly “Now put it back, I know you have a lot of tricks up your sleeve with water and fire. Use air, I’m curious if you made progress.”

Yaël’s smirk instantly disappeared. Great, handle the thing with freaking air, it was precision work. She made the string put the brush back in the bathroom. Then she tried focusing on it to let it fly towards her. Come on, she had done it with the tiles, right? She could do this!

“Come on…” she repeated to herself. Her arm and back began to ache from tensing up her muscles. But the brush did fly towards her and she could almost touch it…as it fell on the floor. “Shit!” she grunted. It had been so close.

This was the thing that she didn’t understand; sometimes she could do a few things using air and sometimes it didn’t work out at all. That part of her power wasn’t reliable at all. She kept staring at the brush angrily.

“So, okay, I’m clearly still bad with air.” Yaël said without looking up. Stupid brush.

“Come eat,” Steve said calmly, totally ignoring her disappointment.

Yaël chewed on a piece of egg while leaning on her hand. Her problem with steering air was consuming her thoughts. There had to be some kind of technique to handle it as precise as she could handle water or fire, right? Maybe her hand coordination wasn’t correct, or maybe there were flaws in her gestures?

But Yaël knew better, her powers had nothing to do with her limbs, using them just made everything easier. She opened the palm of her other hand and let a little flame dance on her fingers. See? She didn’t even have to move to do that. The flame turned into a little ballerina, with tutu and everything. A ballerina, made out of fire. The little person on her hand danced and danced, as smoothly as a real one, pirouette after pirouette.

“Yaël?” “Hmm?” Yaël kept looking at the ballerina doing tricks at the tips of her fingers. “You’re playing with fire while we’re eating.” Steve said sternly, like Yaël was a teenager who was playing onher smartphone during dinner.  The little ballerina waved at Steve and threw him a kiss before she turned into a little cloud of smoke and then disappeared.

“You sound like a dad, Steve,” Yaël grinned at him. Well, she surely hoped Steve was open-minded about kids. If he’d be with that Stark-guy, he’d have to accept Peter too. Not that Tony knew that Peter was his son… yet.

Steve raised an eyebrow, but couldn’t help the smile that ran over his face. He stood up and took the empty plates to the sink. Yaël helped him.

“Oh, I have to go to work…” She said after she looked at the clock hanging above her television.

“I’ll bring you with my motorcycle,” he said while washing his hands “I always have a spare helmet with me.”


	6. Chapter 6

The next day, too, Yaël went to work. She even did some extra hours to please Diego. It rained all day, which sucked for someone who had to work outside. She surely hoped she wouldn’t get a cold again.

A few hours later, she walked back home, looking muddy and completely soaked. Her shoes made squishy noises as she walked into the hallway. Once she opened the door to her apartment, she sprinted into the shower, leaving her clothes on. After that, she hung her clothes to dry, put on a gigantic T-shirt, panties and nothing else.

She laid down on the fluffy rug with her cello and started tuning on the strings. After she fiddled with the instrument for a while, she got up and got a book and a blanket and installed herself in her sofa.

Yaël opened her eyes and stood in the familiar forest once again. Okay, so she fell asleep, oops. She’d surely have a sore neck the next morning from sleeping in the sofa.

“Welcome back.” There he was, the black-haired dude. This time, he had a braid tucking his hair back. It looked kind of awesome, though.

“Cool hair!” Yaël grinned.

“What? Oh…You once did this to me, actually.” He said with a smirk. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

Yaël noticed there was no cage this time, she was free to move, probably because she broke it last time. Wait, that’s not logical at all, because it was a dream. But dreams never had any logic, did they? And where were all the other people by the way? Why were they in the last dream but not in this one? Would this guy have something to do with it?

“Why would I braid your hair?” she asked him casually while following. He was walking towards the little house where he walked out a while ago when she dreamt like this.

“I don’t know, it’s kind of a habit to have braids around here. I think my unbraided hair annoyed you.” Here? Where is here? Where were they? Yaël looked around, but all she could see were trees and darkness. As she looked up, she could see the lines of a few towers and turrets from some kind of castle far, far away, like she had seen before in these dreams.

The closer Yaël got to the cottage, the older it started to look, but also well maintained. Someone had taken care of all those flowers around the small building. Someone must’ve painted these shutters a thousand times and someone must’ve spend hours of keeping the ivy, curling up against the walls, in control.

Why could she almost see someone do it?

The man held the rounded door open for her. The light coming from the house looked inviting. Yaël’s mouth fell open as she walked in. The interior looked cozy and warm. There were plaids and rugs everywhere. An open fire warmed up the room and, together with a few candles, lighted it. There were no signs of electricity or modern devices of any kind. The bed was placed behind a big sort of curtain which served as a door and stood open a bit so Yaël could see it.

“I used to live here…” she mumbled to herself. The man, who decided to sit down for a minute while she looked around, stayed silent. “Who lived here with me?” Yaël turned around and saw that black-head eating a pear from the big basket of fruit standing next to the old, comfy-looking chair he was sitting in. So he was kind of stealing her pears now?

The man swallowed a piece of the fruit before he answered. “You lived here with your father a long time ago. A very, very long time ago. His name was-“

“Cem,” she interrupted him, remembering bits and pieces of the story. Cem, her dad, had been a big, muscular man with a grey beard, long, grey hair that was almost always braided and happy wrinkles of laughter under his eyes. His grey hair fitted with his blue eyes, blue because of being able to steer water, like a piece of art.

Suddenly, a memory came across Yaël’s mind, which made her flinch her a bit. She suddenly understood what the man meant with a long, long time ago, since her dad had died a long time ago. A very long time ago. Her dad had been coughing for a whole while, and after some time, the phlegm turned into blood. He died of some form of tuberculosis and Yaël stayed behind, alone.

Her mother, Agostina, had never been in the picture. She died when Yaël couldn’t even walk yet. Apperantly, Yaël had a younger sister, Nilla, who stayed in town when her father decided to move out. But why? Why did a young kid like Nilla decided to stay alone in a town? And why did Cem decide to move out of that town?

“You’re frowning, that doesn’t look pretty on you,” the man mumbled nonchalant while still hanging in the chair.

“Do you know why we moved into the forest? I mean like, there’s nobody else living here.” The man stood up and walked around.

“You once told me you were banished from town,” he answered while he fiddled with a plaid hanging against a wall and held his other hand behind his back.

“Why?”

“Because everyone thought you were ‘damaged’-“

“For having these weird powers?” she interrupted him.

“For having no powers at all.”

What?! “That doesn’t make sense, I can steer the four elements!”

He let the plaid go and turned to her, standing with his both hands behind his back.  Every move he made, was gracious, like he was royal or something.

“There was a time you didn’t have those powers,” he answered “I even met you when you still had no powers. So the king saw no use in you, and banned you as he was afraid you carried a disease that could infect others. He also wanted to make sure this way that you’d never reproduce. Because how could you have kids if you never came in contact with any men, right? And Cem didn’t want to send you alone in the woods, so he came with you and built this house, all on his own.”

“Then why didn’t my sister come with us?” Yaël felt like she knew the answers to all of her own questions, but she wanted him to tell it to her. She wanted to hear everything, so she was sure she wasn’t imagining stuff, even though he was just a part of her dream.

“Oh, but Nilla was very talented with her power: fire. The king kept her, so she’d work for him. She still does, I guess.”

“Wait, so, if I understand this correctly, I lived in a country where all people could steer the elements?”

“Well, everyone could steer one element, no one actually could do what you do: steering all four of them. Your dad steered water and your sister fire. Your mother had heterochromia, so she was one of the few people who could steer a bit of fire and a bit of air.” What was this town, or land or whatever? There was no place on earth like this one, right? Where there countries filled with people with powers to steer the elements?

“So…where the freaking freck on earth are we? And why can I steer all four elements if nobody else can do that?” The guy smirked at her.

“Oh,  my dear, we’re not even on earth… And your second question is a bit harder to explain.” No, that’s impossible, right? Well, at least, that would explain why Yaël still didn’t know half of how earth worked. Like the voting system; it freaked her out.

And she remembered taking the bus for the first time, that was way too complicated for her to understand, with the paying and then following the screen that flickered and kept saying the same stop because apparently it was broken and Yaël somehow had to guess where her stop was and then she didn’t know she had to push the button so she missed her own stop. The bus driver got angry at her for yelling “STOP!” so loudly.

“So I’m like, an alien?”

“There’s no shame in that as I am an alien too. From a different planet, though, but still some sort of alien.”

“Which planet is this?” Yaël asked as she looked through the window. It surely was a planet filled with trees.

“This planet’s called He-“

“YAËL, WAKE UP GIRLIE!” Yaël almost jumped out of bed from getting scared up.

“Holy shit,” she mumbled while rubbing her eyes. Who woke her- Oh, it surely was that freaking Wade again. He was the only one who called her ‘girlie’ and who would wake her up like this. Was he making a habit of waking her up? Yaël stamped towards the door and pulled it open aggressively.

“Wow, good morning, angry German bitch.” Wade cocked an eyebrow as he saw Yaël’s murderous looking face.

“Dude, I was so close from knowing what planet I came from!”

“Oh, sor-“

“Don’t say sorry, you jerk! You couldn’t know! Come in.” she grumbled pissed.

“So, you’re an alien? I told you Fury and X kept something from you.” Wade said while Yaël made a cup of coffee for him. Wade visited her for no specific reason. He knew she only had to work in the afternoon today, so he simply jumped in during the morning.

“Do you think they knew?”

“I don’t know, probably. Why don’t you ask them?” That was a good idea, she should call one of them. “So do you remember what language they speak on your planet?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s a bit complicated. We speak two languages, but in our dialect, we mix those two,” Yaël scratched her head, how could she remember the two/three languages she spoke, but not the name of the planet she came from? “One language is a specific one from our planet itself. The other one is Norwegian.”

“What? Norwegian? That’s a random language…Why would they speak that?”

“I don’t know,” Yaël shrugged.

“Well, count to ten in Norwegian for me!” Yaël laughed, this was so weird, a few hours ago, she didn’t even remember that she had another mother tongue.

“Uhm, let me see… Null, en, to, tre, fire, fem, seks, syv, åtte, ni, ti.” Wade clapped for her way to enthusiastically

“That sounds so crazy! Let me try it!”

Somehow Wade managed to pronounce every word correctly.

“Dude, are you Norwegian yourself or are you an alien too?” Yaël asked with a wide grin.

“Alt bra? Wow, detteermoro!” Wade answered her ‘How are you? Wow, this is fun!’ in fluent Norwegian. How did he even…?

“Wade, stop it, you’re freaking me out.” Yaël muttered. She’d never understand how this guy’s brain works, but it surely was freaking creepy.

 

 

“Do you want to go party tonight?” Wade randomly asked. Yaël was eating breakfast and Wade joined her around the table, sipping from his coffee.

“I have to work until seven, but I’m free tomorrow…meh, why not.”

“Good!” the guy grinned. Yaël somehow doubted if partying with Wade would be the most responsible thing to do, but whatever. Having some fun wasn’t a crime, right?

Wade stayed for the rest of the morning. They watched a few episodes of their series and made some arrangements for the night. Yaël quickly ate some soup, shooed Wade away and went to work again. She had to go Mr. and Mrs. Thompson again, so that was great! Would they have made some cookies again? While walking to the old couple’s house, she took her phone.

Wade was right, she should call professor X, maybe he’d know where she came from. She could also wait until she slept again, but she didn’t always dream about the forest, so there was no certainty in getting more info via the dream within this week and she really, really wanted to know it as soon as possible. But Yaël didn’t want to bother or disturb X once again.

On the other hand, Fury wouldn’t pick up the phone and X literally told her she should call him more frequently if something was wrong.

As soon as the beeping stopped and she heard a soft crack from someone picking up the phone, Yaël started speaking because she knew X didn’t always have the habit of starting to speak as he picked up.

“Hi, mister X?”

“ _Yes. Hello, Yaël.”_

“Hi, uhm, I have a new problem.”

_“Your apartment got warmed up again, right?”_

“Yes, yes, thank you for that!” Oh, wow, she felt like she sounded ungrateful.

“ _Okay, so what can I help you with?”_ he asked kindly.

“Uhm, so I dreamt again and, eh, I kind of discovered I’m from another planet. But somehow I remember the languages I speak, but I simply can’t remember the planet itself. So, I was wondering if you knew the name of my planet.”

_“Oh, I’m sorry, but I don’t have that information.”_

He had to be kidding her, right? He read her files, he helped her through the tests once she woke up in that hospital-ish place. He must’ve got some info about her birthplace.

 _I’m afraid you never had the chance to tell mister Furywhere you’re from, or that he never wrote it in your files anyways and I never took the opportunity to dig into your mind for that info,_ X said in her head. Great, why did she even bother to call that man if she could just ‘think’ to communicate with him. Oh, shit, she never told him she accidentally met Steve in the park.

 _Oh._ Fuck. Yaël, stop thinking.

 _“That’s okay, Yaël.”_ He started speaking through the phone again.

“W-why were you in my head and now- heh?” she muttered confusedly.

“ _Sometimes I too like to test my powers, Yaël. I’m not at all around New York at this time and I wanted to see if I can reach to you there.”_

“You obviously can.”

“ _Yes, but it’s extremely uncomfortable. I’d say I’d come over to help you, but I have a few meetings this week, spread across the country. If I’d reach further I’d be able to help you from afar, but I’m afraid that won’t work out.”_

“That’s okay, sir.”

_“I’ll come over to do another session as soon as possible.”_

“Thanks, sir. There’s no hurry.” At least she didn’t want him to think he’d have to hurry, he was too kind for her.

She felt a bit frustrated after that phone call. Somehow, she had hoped X had answers for her, but he had none. Maybe she should call Fury? Last time, he let his assistant pick up in his place. But there was no harm in trying, right?

* _Beep beep_ * Yaël sighed, why was she even trying?

“ _Yes_?” Fury sounded a bit annoyed, like he was suspecting that she did something stupid again.

Holy shit, he actually picked up the phone.

“Eh, hi, it’s Yaël. I have a question, mister Fury?”

“ _What is it_?” talking to Fury surely wasn’t as pleasant as talking to X. Fury sounded way more…restive. Probably because he didn’t like her anyways.

So Yaël told her about her recently gained memories and asked him about the planet she came from. His answer was clear.

“ _Are you calling me for this? I don’t have time for things like this, Yaël. Why don’t you call mister Rogers or whoever about that?_ ” And with that, he hung up.

 _Because you never informed me that I could contact mister freaking Rogers, dick!_ Yaël thought. But, it wasn’t a bad idea actually! Steve was going to help her if Fury wanted it or not and he could…he could…Oh, fuck it!

Yaël stomped through the street while slamming on the touch screen of her phone. Wait a bloody minute. Steve’s number wasn’t in her phone… what?! She still didn’t have his number! Suddenly Yaël discovered she walked too far, which didn’t light up her mood.

Yaël had to rake the leaves, the most braindead job the Thompsons could have given her. Well, no, pulling out the weeds like the previous time was most definitely more braindead. Not that she’d ever complain about certain tasks. She’d just put on her headphones and dig into it.

But this time, she needed no music. She could just calm down a bit and think about the situation. Like for instance, if she’d called Steve right after calling Fury, she would have been somewhat more aggressive towards him and afterwards, she’d be sorry about that.

Not that he had never seen her angry before, but still, this situation wasn’t Steve’s fault at all. Guess she just had to be patient about it. With some luck, she’d dream about it that night.

 

When Yaël was finally finished with raking all the leaves it started pouring rain again. Then the rain turned into hail. Freaking January.

Without even thinking about it, Yaël steered the rain and hail away from her, so it seemed she had some sort of waterproof shield around her. She picked up the leaves and started putting them into big bags. When she looked up, she saw Mrs. Thompson staring at her from her kitchen window, with her mouth fallen open.

Yaël looked up and then it kicked in that her clients didn’t know about her powers at all. What could she do? Yaël panicked and stopped steering the hail.  Which caused her getting soaked, but she hoped Mrs. Thompson would think she imagined it. The old woman disappeared behind the window. Yaël should go and get her bag, right? It was time to go. But as she went to get her backpack, someone opened the backdoor.

“Sweet child, come in!” Mrs. Thompson yelled. Yaël looked up confusedly. “Come on, before you get sick!”

Yaël nodded slowly and then took a sprint to the house.

“Here, get a cookie!” Yaël was put in front of an open fire with a trillion blankets wrapped around her. Mr. Thompson was still putting new lumps of firewood into the open fire. Yaël took a cookie from the plate Mrs. Thompson was holding in front of her nose.

“T-thanks,” she said. This wasn’t what she’d thought would happen if she’d use her powers in front of clients.

“So, are you a mutant, too?” Mr. Thompson casually asked while wiping off his hands on his pants. Wow, that question got dropped on her like a bomb. What could she say? Did she have to explain that she was an alien or would that make things go bad?

“Eh, sort of,” she mumbled vaguely.

“We had two grandchildren who were mutants.” Mrs. Thompson happily mentioned. Yaël remembered Mrs. Thompson telling her once that the couple only had one daughter because they couldn’t get any more and that they simply gave up that big-family-dream at some point and gave their daughter and grandchildren all the love they had.

“Well, Scott still is, but many years ago, back in the early nineties, Alex passed away.” She pointed at the pictures of two men, hanging above their open fire. There were many pictures of them, as babies playing on the beach, as kids on a horse mill with their grandmother, as teenagers playing baseball with their grandfather…

Yaël totally didn’t know how to react to that, but it seemed like they didn’t expect her to as they just kept talking. They clearly didn’t need to hear her condolences for something that happened years ago.

“Yup, their parents were always ashamed about the mutant-stuff, though.” Mr. Thompson said. “They always lied, and still lie, about it to everyone. They say they send them to a boarding school for their troubling behavior, but Alex was actually kind of rescued from solitary confinement by this Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, where he was put in for not being able to control his powers. They took him to this school… uh…”

“Xavier’s school for Gifted Youngsters!” Mrs. Thompson helped her husband.

“Yes! And a few years later, Scott started showing his powers as well, which troubled his parents somehow and they called Alex to come and pick up the little one too. He still visits us every now and then and sends us postcards. Lovely young boy.”

Yaël stayed and had dinner with the Thompsons, she felt more welcome than ever. But they had always had the talent for making her feel welcome. They didn’t ask her to show off her powers or anything, they just let her be who she was and accepted her that way. Hopefully Scott knew how lucky he was with grandparents like this.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson did ask a few questions out of curiosity. Questions like: “So, did you also go to Xavier’s school?” Yaël’s trick was stuffing her mouth with peas so that she’d always have a few seconds before she could answer, because she needed some time to think about it.

She remembered Fury and X discussing the fact that X trained her for a while. That probably happened at his school, right? So she nodded.

“Oh, so then you must know Scotty! He’s a teacher there. Maybe you students called him mister Summers…” Mrs. Thompson chattered happily.

Errr, shit, Yaël was kind of trapped in that one. Quickly she pushed a big spoon of peas into her mouth again. If she went to the school, she must have met Scott there, right? So Yaël nodded again, only to realize that she could’ve put herself into a corner again. Hopefully they didn’t ask her about the course Scott gave or about homework or anything. She surely wished he taught her how to take a bus a while ago.

But luckily, with that Mr. Thompson looked at the clock and told his wife their soap was going to start. So Yaël helped them clean the table and thanked them a thousand times before stepping into the rain again, this time with an umbrella she got from Mrs. Thompson.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Tonight  
> We are young  
> So let's set the world on fire  
> We can burn brighter  
> Than the sun"
> 
> Fun. - We Are Young

Maybe drinking with Wade wasn’t such a smart idea after all, Yaël realized after a few pints and wines. The man just couldn’t get drunk. Every time he got a bit tipsy, he almost immediately sobered up again.

But the Merc with a mouth kept feeding her drinks. Of course, Yaël could’ve stopped drinking at some point, but she simply didn’t. Was it out of frustration or something? Even she didn’t know, instead just keeping on drinking with zero fucks to give.

The night started with Wade showing up at her apartment, carrying a big box and throwing a piece of fabric at her. The piece of fabric happened to be a very open dress, which Yaël didn’t want to wear. But she came to realization that all her clothes without holes in, which weren’t a lot, were in the laundry.

In the end; she had two choices: going out looking like a hobo or looking like a fancy slut. She still wasn’t digging the slutty dress, but she really, really didn’t want to appear in public looking like a homeless person. It was dark-green, like the color of a pine tree. The cleavage was very deep and there were openings to each side of her ribs. Okay, she wasn’t naked or anything, but still…

“So what, are you like, my pimp?” Yaël asked Wade a bit sarcastically as he was doing her make-up.

“What?! No way, you look way to fancy and fabulous to be a prostitute!”

“Dude, look at me,” she said as she pointed at her breasts. “These two are almost falling out of there. It’s way too tight!”

“They look great! And it might be tight up there but look how swirly your skirt is! It looks like you’re a ballerina made out of satin!”

“And why again do you know how to do my make-up?” Maybe Yaël should be worrying.

“I had and still have my party-days!”

“What do you expect me to think about that?” Yaël laughed. This guy was weird but so, so great. Well, as long as he didn’t start throwing plates around the place. That was of course something she wouldn’t forget that easily.

When Wade was done with making Yaël look like she has royal blood, but the slutty version of that, he took the big box he brought with him and gave it to Yaël.

“What? This is for me?” she asked. Wade nodded and that was for Yaël a sign to open it. Black, matte plates. A dozen of them.

“You like them?” Wade asked. “I promised I’d get you some beautiful plates and these fit with your dark soul.”

“Thanks,” Yaël answered with a wide grin “They are so cool! I mean like, who the heck has plates like these?”

After they put away the plates, they decided it was time to go. “So, are we going to have sex after this?” Wade asked as they were walking down the stairs.

“You wish, horny-boy.” Yaël answered dryly.

 

 

A few hours later, Yaël was laying on her back on a filthy floor in a bar. A random dude used her belly as a pillow while they were thinking about weird ways to say their names. Not that Yaël would remember his name afterwards.

“Yaël, you want another?” Yaël looked up and saw Wade hanging above her with a pint in his hands.

“Wade, I lost you!” she answered him, happy to finally see her friend back after such a long time.

“Oh girlie, I really was only gone for five minutes to take a wee, but okay.” Wade answered while glancing at the guy who was laying on her.

“Wait, is that legit a different dude than from five minutes ago?”

“No. This is still Tim.” Yaël turned with her eyes.

“Eh, my name is Jeremy,” The guy answered awkwardly.

“Oh.” It was a bit quiet after that while everybody tried to forget about that last bit.

“Come on,” Wade shooed the man off her belly “Let’s go, before you start an orgy here.”

“Why would I do that?!” Yaël stumbled a bit as Wade helped her get up.

“I don’t know what your natural habits were on that planet of yours!” Wade said while handing her the beer.

“Wait, I’ll come for you later, you gave me your address!” Jeremy said to Yaël with a ridiculous looking playful smile.

“No I did not!” Yaël said, she wasn’t that stupid.

“Yeah, you did, it’s P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney!” Wade looked a bit surprised at the dude, then he started laughing so loudly that the sound filled the whole bar.

“You…are drunk,” Wade grinned while pointing at Jeremy. He then pointed at Yaël “And you…are a genius! Come on, we’re going home.”

“No! You’re not going to steal my ch-chick!” Jeremy blabbered loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Dude, she’s my chick, we’re married! The girl is my property, I even pee on her every now and then!” Yaël curled her nose a bit after Wade’s reply. But she wasn’t thinking fast enough to talk back, this was all so random.

“Dude, I spoke to her a moment ago, she’s my girl too!” another drunk guy ‘joined’ the ‘conversation’, like he didn’t even hear Wade’s weird exclamation. Other guys came buzzing around them too, talking about how Yaël somehow seemed to be their property.

“Wait? Are you guys too drunk or too dumb to see that we’re in New York right now and she gave you all an address in Sydney, you know, Australia! It’s the address Dory always repeats in Finding Nemo, you dumb twats!” Wade yelled, but nobody listened to him.

Yaël totally didn’t like being called a piece of someone and every time some random guy she just danced with or had a drink with, said it, she got more and more annoyed.  So when someone laid his hand on her shoulder to pull her back to him, she snatched out of it and…accidentally used her powers. Being drunk made it way harder to control them.

When she looked up, she saw that one of the curtains was on fire.

“Uh-ow…” Wade mumbled. One of the five men around them, pointed his finger to Wade and screamed

“HE DID THIS, HE’S CRAZY!” Of course, Wade totally didn’t do that, but these five drunk men felt certain he did just so they couldn’t take Yaël home.

“JEZUS FUCKING CHRIST!” Yaël suddenly screamed, way louder than the other men. “ARE YOU ALL IDIOTS?! I TALK TO YOU GUYS AND YOU ALL SUDDENLY THINK WE HAVE A ROMANCE?!” Wade looked at her, picked her up, threw her over his shoulder and carried her outside while she kept screaming. “I HOPE ALL OF YOU WILL END ALONE! BURN IN HELL! ANY OF YOU FUCKING PRICKS MOVE AND I’LL EXCECUTE EVERY MOTHERFUCKING LAST ONE OF YA-”

“Okay, are you now quoting the intro of Pulp Fiction? Girl, stop being way cooler when you’re drunk. You just wait here, I’ll fix you a ride home, okay?” Wade said after he put her back down as soon as they were outside.

“What are you going to do?” Yaël grumbled.

“I’m going to fix this mess inside.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, Wade.” Yaël replied annoyed.

“I didn’t say you did… You did nothing wrong actually,” he said while typing a text. When he had send it, he repeated “Wait here” and ran back inside.

 

 

“It’s ohso quiet, tudududuu, tudududuuu…It’s oh, so still…” Yaël sang to herself just to see her breath in the cold air. How long was she standing here? She was feeling a bit sad. Why couldn’t she just enjoy an evening without getting herself into trouble? She felt like, like…like she needed a permanent babysit or something, but she was an adult, right? It wasn’t her problem that those guys were stupid idiots filled with testosterone!

That and Wade put her in this stupid dress, maybe he just wanted a fight. Maybe he used her to make a fight. Yaël smiled at her own drunk stupidity.

Yaël was turning in rounds just to make her skirt swirl around. After a little while, she stopped turning, but couldn’t stop laughing. As soon as she stood still, she saw Steve standing in front of her. Then, of course, she tried wobbling over to him, but fell down of dizziness, what made her laugh even harder.

“H-how long have you been standing there already?” Yaël rolled on her back and looked up to Steve.

“A solid five minutes. Get up.”

“Help me in this eternal embarrassment,” she muttered, looking up into the sky with the palms of her hands facing upwards.

“How much did you drink?”

“Seven beers and four wines!”

Steve sighed and helped her get up. “Wait, is that all you’re wearing?” He asked her, she shrugged. “Yaël, it’s January. Where’s your jacket or vest or something?”

“Inside, but I think Wade is causing a deicide there…” Steve snorted, unzipped his jacket and hung it over her shoulders. He signed her to follow him and so she did.

“Since when do you wear dresses like that?” he asked while walking towards his car.

“Wade gave it to me.”

“What? Did he want you to get objectified?” he frowned.

“I don’t like getting objectified.” Yaël muttered, also frowning.

When they got to the motorcycle, Steve pushed a helmet over Yaël’s head. Yaël climbed on and a second later, Steve sat down behind her.

“I know you don’t like getting objectified, so why are you wearing it?” The motorcycle turned on with a hum and Steve steered the vehicle to leave the parking lot it was standing on.

“Because I don’t have other pretty clothes,” Yaël pouted.

“You don’t need revealing dresses to look pretty, Yaël.” He had a point there, didn’t he? Or was he complimenting her? He was! He meant that she didn’t have to look like a prostitute to be attractive, right?

“Did you know I dreamt about you?” The words suddenly flapped out of her mouth.

“Oh, did you?” She could swear she saw him smirk a bit.

“Not like that! But I have like weird memory-dreams where I discover stuff about my past. I don’t really know how it works. How are you and Tony by the way?” Steve blinked a few times, he must be exhausted. How late was it anyways?  He was still waiting for the conversation to end before taking off with his motorcycle. Otherwise the vehicle would make too much noise for them to hear each other. Good guy Steve.

“Wait, Yaël, one subject at a time. Why don’t you tell me more about those dreams of you?”

So, Yaël told him what she had seen at night. She didn’t know how much she told him afterwards, because somewhere during her own words, she fell asleep and that’s when Steve finally started driving. Sometime later, when Steve carried her off the motorcycle, she woke up and started rattling again.

“So how’s Tony? You should invite him! We should like, h-hang out rrrright now!” Steve shook his head and put her back on her feet, looking a bit cautious to see if she’d fall down again.

“Not a smart idea, Yaël.”

“What? Am I not fun enough for this mister Stark? Is he handsome by the way? Don’t look at me like that!” Steve glanced at her, his cheeks turned a bit reddish. When they arrived at the lift Steve pressed the button. This time there was no one sleeping between the doors, because the thing came immediately.

“I… I just don’t think you’d like meeting him.” Steve said without looking at her. What was he talking about.

“Is he no fun?”

“No-yes, yes, of course he is fun, Yaël.”

“So, what’s the problem then?”

“Maybe he just…doesn’t want to meet you.” Auch, why the hell would somebody just reject her like that without giving her a chance? Unless…she once got a chance?

“I fucked up, right?” Steve gave up his language-stare immediately.

“Oh, no, no, not really, Yaël. I mean, you didn’t know what you were doing, and he wasn’t really capable of looking at you differently after that.” Yaël felt a tear running down her cheek even though she didn’t understand what Cap was talking about. Someone didn’t like her, and she wasn’t sober at all, enough reasons to cry.

“What are you talking about?” Steve casually wiped away her tear and signed her to get out of the lift. Apparently, they had arrived at her floor.

“Well, it’s a bit complicated and as you’re drunk, and you don’t even remember big parts and persons of your life when you’re sober, I think it’s smarter to wait until you remember a bit more before I explain this to you. Let’s just say that, when you arrived in New York, you didn’t really know which side you were on.”

“And I made trouble with Mr. Stark?”

“Eh, yeah, kind of.” That was vague, and unfair. She had the right to know what she had done, but Steve was persistent and kept his mouth shut. His lips even turned a bit white from pressing them together after Yaël tried to get the story out of him by keeping asking questions while poking him.

He seemed to be glad when they entered her apartment and Yaël’s concentration surrendered itself.

“LOOK AT MY PLATES!” she happily yelled, totally unaware that she lost her own poke-war and that she had been rejected by an unknown person just a minute ago. Yaël showed the plates she got from Wade. Steve just threw her a tired smile. Then he frowned, like he suddenly thought of something.

“Wait, Yaël, why did Wade put you out of the bar like that? I mean, he always seems so nice, I can’t imagine him just dumping you outside for just a reason like a little fight.”

“I set the bar on fire,” Yaël confessed while staring at the plate in her hands. She felt like it was a crime that Steve wasn’t as enthusiastic as she was about the plates. Steve stared at her for a moment, trying to find if Yaël’s answer was a joke or not.

Then he scratched his head and said: “Of course you did… Someone like you shouldn’t drink, Yaël. Maybe I have to warn Wade about that.”

Yaël could not think of any other reply than just sticking out her tongue.

“Okay, Yaël, we’re going to sleep now, right?” Steve asked hopeful, but Yaël showed no mercy.

“No, we still need to dance!” Yaël grabbed Steve’s waist. Steve tried to gently push her back.

“There’s no music, Yaël, let’s go to bed.”

“You want me to sing Edith Piaf for you?” Steve smiled widely at her for remembering his taste in music. “Steve, dear,” Yaël said as she grabbed his hand and put her other one on his shoulder. He automatically put his hand on her back “We need to practice for that special dance for when you get married to that asshole. Since you don’t have a mother to dance with, you’ll have to do it with me.”

Steve sighed, but let Yaël calling Tony an asshole just this once.

“Yaël, I’m pretty sure that you’re talking about a father-daughter dance, so maybe we have to wait for that when you get married, right? Since you’re not my dad and I’m not your daughter either.” Yaël looked up, still holding him, ready to dance.

“Are you going to do the father-daughter dance with me?”

“Who else is going to do that when you get married?” Yaël frowned as she thought about a detail she was missing there. She didn’t have a father to dance with, nor one to walk her to the aisle or repair stuff for her when she didn’t know how to do it. She didn’t have a dad to save her with the small things of life, like the daddy’s shoulder to cry on or a dad who’d protect her from the big, tough world. Maybe not all fathers are like that, probably not.

Her sight on fathers probably was more magical than reality. She once had a father, though. A very sweet, good man. It’s weird how things can change so enormously. It’s weird how she’d be able to imagine Cem walking her to the aisle but knowing that never happened nor ever will happen.

Steve was a good replacement for all of that cheesy stuff…but that was not what crept into Yaël’s head.

“Oh,” she said as she remembered what it was. “I’m not going to get married!”

“Yeah, not right now, but-“

“No, not ever! You see, I’m banished, I don’t even have the right to get married.” By being drunk, she accidentally started mixing her memories of the two worlds she had been living in.

“Of course, you do, Yaël…” Steve muttered a bit surprised. Yaël laid her head against his chest and yawned.

“No, I don’t, I don’t have that right…”

Steve looked down to answer her, but saw she fell asleep against him.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Yaël groaned as she heard someone knock on her bedroomdoor. She turned to her other side, away from the door, and kept her eyes shut. But the person knocking on her door was persistent and kept trying to wake her up.

“Yaël, get up!” the person, clearly a man, yelled. Yaël’s brain was still too lazy to think about the voice and find out who was stalking her. Did this person have a dead-wish or something?

With a soft creak the door opened.

“Are you wearing clothes? Please say yes?” With those words, Yaël’s brain started functioning again, she was awake. Shit, was she wearing clothes or not?

“Steve, don’t be such a prude,” she mumbled with her face still buried in a pillow.

“There’s someone here for you, please get out of bed,” he said dryly. What?! Who could that be? She rolled out of bed and wrestled herself out of her blankets. Then she stood up, stumbling a bit as she was struggling with the blankets. Yaël finally got out of her nest and stepped in front of Steve, rubbing her eyes. Steve stared at her, obviously focusing on her eyes. Yaël recognized that look and glanced down quickly. Yup, she was totally wearing nothing at all. Oops.

“Please put some clothes on.” Steve turned around and walked out of the room.

“PRUDE!” Yaël yelled before Steve closed the door behind him.

Goddammit, it’d better be the pope waiting for her, waking her up like that. After a few minutes, she had dug up wearable clothes and walked out of her room. Steve was making small-talk with…Peter? What was he doing here?

Whatever, coffee first, questions later.

“Morning,” she sounded a bit hoarse. Well, right, she always sounded hoarse. Freaking weird voice, man, Yaël still seemed to forget sometimes what her voice sounded like.

She felt Peter stare at her.

“Uh, it’s past four in the afternoon?” Peter remarked. Yaël gave the coffee-machine a little loving tap for giving her the warm drink. Then Peter’s words sunk in.

“Oh, crap! I knew I shouldn’t have partied with Wade last night…How long have you been here by the way?” she said as she turned to Steve. His random appearance that morning was still confusing her.

Steve laughed a bit at her and reminded her about what had happened last night.

“I made myself comfortable on the couch.” Peter breathed out subtly after Steve said those words. Yaël looked at him. Oh, it was so clear he thought there was more going on between Steve and Yaël a moment ago, before Steve made clear that they slept apart. She wished she could show Peter how Steve was headstrong enough not to look at her nudeness just a few minutes ago.

“You could have woken me,” Yaël took a good gulp from her coffee as she took a second to think about Peter’s random appearance.  “You have your interview, no?” she asked him, he had told her about that before the attack of that green Goblin-guy started.

Peter nodded.

“When?” Yaël stared at the brown substance in the mug while making circles to make the fluid move.

“Uh, in forty minutes.” Yaël looked up. Wait, so why did he come to her?

“So, what’chadoing here?” she asked him. Peter told her he got nervous. Just for having the balls to admit his nervousness while standing next to Captain America, Yaël gave Peter some extra respect-points in her head.

Of course the kid was nervous! That was, again, so human of him. Peter was going to meet his dad again, who still didn’t know he had a son. Well, if Yaël really wanted to shake Peter up some more, she could tell him he was standing to what could be his stepdad someday. But Yaël didn’t want to give Peter an attack, nor did she want Steve to have a nervous breakdown. Jesus, what a weird situation.

Stark, that drama-causing guy… 

“You need me to join?” Yaël asked Peter. Sure, she knew that was a bit of a weird proposal, but this Tony caught her attention and she didn’t want Peter to faint out of stress.

“Yaël,” Steve said. She looked up and saw Cap giving her a dangerous stare. Great, he was going to play daddy Steve again? Yaël held her hands in the air and rolled her eyes. Sure, she reacted a bit sassy, but that she needed no protection from someone called Tony. That name didn’t sound horrifying at all and it belonged to the mystery-dad of her one friend and to the crush of her other one. So, the guy couldn’t be a complete monster, right?

Yaël started grumbling. “Sure, the guy somehow can’t _stand_ me, but it’s not like I’ll run in to him, right? Besides, if he’s so butthurt about it, he can just kiss my-“

“Yaël!” Steve and Peter yelled at her in unison. They both blushed a bit, which would make them even a better father-son duo. Would that make Peter, like, her brother? Oh, man, these two men were taking over her mind.

“Sorry, shouldn’t have said that… But c’mon Steve, I can’t let Peter go there alone! Can’t you see how nervous he is?” Steve glanced at Peter for a second. Yaël could swear she actually saw Peter shake a bit.

“Fine, just… stay away from him, okay? I know it sounds kind of… mean from him, but I really think he can’t handle it right now.” Yaël cocked her eyebrow at Steve and he simply stared back. They were doing a little who-would-win-the-imposing-stare-battle, like real adults do. Steve stared at her to make sure she got the message and Yaël stared back just to show him he’d not impose her by staring like that.

It was Peter who ended the staring-contest by asking if Yaël had a car, so Yaël put on her way too wide grin, just to bully Peter.

“Oh, I see how it is. Mr. Parker just wanted a ride, isn’t it?” Peter shook his head a bit panicky jokingly. “Well, too bad for you; I don’t have a driver’s license, after all.” Yaël was terrible at driving. She remembered Steve trying to teach it to her multiple times, but there was too much to focus on, too much she didn’t understand about cars or driving. So Yaël almost crashed a few times, which always ended in Steve saving the day, being the hero and annoying the heck out of her. Maybe she was too dumb to learn it, maybe because she actually came from another planet without things like machines, robots or cars.

So, when Peter’s mouth fell open and he told her that he couldn’t believe he got his driver’s license before her, she almost put her fist into his face. Why did he say that with Cap standing next to him? Now that old man was laughing with her again! Why was driving so important, jeez. It was just a big frustration to her.

“Not like I needed a driver’s license in space,” she tried to bitch back, but it sounded a bit weakly. Peter looked at her like he just saw her turn into the green creature everyone thinks about when you say the word ‘alien’, with eyes wide open. Cap, on the other hand, already knew she was an alien. He was just surprised she remembered it and he was probably putting the pieces together since she talked to him about her banishment the night before. “Oh yeah, apparently I’m an alien from outer space. Who knew, right?” she tried to sound uncaring about it, but that topic, too, was a big frustration. Her life was a big frustration.

When she noticed Cap still laughing with her situation (just grinning, but that was Steve’s way of bullying her) she shot him back with a joke about being incompetent of using a smartphone while being ‘friend’ with Stark-dude. Again, Peter didn’t have to know about Steve’s, quite instable, situation either, so she kept her words clean.

 

 

Yaël never really liked taking a cab. There were weirdo’s out there, driving around, being…weird. So, after Steve said some encouraging words to Peter before he took off again, the two of them stood outside, waiting for a taxi. It was silent for a moment, so Yaël started daydreaming a bit, making mental sketches of the cottage she lived in in a former life.

“So, you’re hungover?” Yaël blinked a few times when she heard Peter’s voice, making a mental note she had to go to bed early that night.

“What? Pffrt, no way! I’m fine.” She couldn’t remember she ever had been hungover.

“And you’re an alien,” Peter was playing with fire, encouraging her to talk about the most irritating subject of her life at the moment. So Yaël tried to answer calmly, the boy had nothing to do with the matter, so she shouldn’t start rambling about it.

“Yeah, apparently so. Though nobody wants to tell me where I’m from or how I got to be here. It’s so frustrating, I can’t remember anything, and everybody who knows just simply refuses to say anything!” Okay, maybe she just rambled a tiny bit, but luckily Peter just let it go instead of throwing her a stop-raging-glance.

A few taxis passed them. Yaël saw one, clearly driving over the speed-limits, before it stopped in front of them with screeching tires. The driver opened the passenger-door from inside and… WADE?! Why was he driving a taxi?

“How did you even know we needed a cab?” Yaël asked, it reminded her of that one time Wade texted her an answer to a question she hadn’t even asked yet.

“I didn’t! I got someone chasing after me, but I saw you two holding out your hands like idiots so I figured you could use the drive. Come, come and follow me into my absolutely safe adventure. If you’re lucky, you might get to see an angry mutated wolverine, but don’t worry, he’s harmless!” Oh, that sounded extremely legit. Yaël looked at Peter, what should they do? Drive with this maniac friend of hers or being late on the interview?

Peter had never had such a sarcastic look on his face before. He was clearly not liking the idea of driving with Wade, since the guys seemed to only bring bad luck to Peter. But when the teenager didn’t seem to be able to make a decision, Yaël jumped into the car, grabbed Peter’s arm and pulled him inside too.

“C’mon, we’re losing time. We need to get to Stark Industries,” she told him. He was obviously still not liking the idea, but he quickly strapped on his seatbelt.

Wade appeared to be relaxed while driving like someone who had just escaped jail. Yaël just wanted to bark something at him about almost killing a few people and ruining a hot-dog stand, when she looked outside and saw police following them. Holy fuck, was he trying to kill them again? Yaël threw a glance at Peter, who started cursing. He looked a bit pale. She hoped he wouldn’t puke on his clothes before his interview with Stark. Yaël wanted to pat his leg to calm him down, but she suddenly heard Wade scream.

There were freaking knives or something rammed through Wade’s skull from the roof of the car. Somethingwas standing on the roof…carving into Wade’s brains.

“Wolverine…” Peter muttered as he stared at the knives too. The knives slid up again and just disappeared. Wade’s lifeless body fell against the steering wheel, blood gushing out of his head. Yaël swallowed a few times as her stomach turned around before she realized nobody was driving the car.

Okay, so this was Yael’s deathbed. She was sure about it. It was her choice, she pulled this innocent teenager into his own death. Peter jumped forward, trying to steer the car away from the people. Yaël tried to clear her mind and help him in the only way she could. There was an old lady crossing the road, there was no way they could still avoid her with this car driving so fast, without control.

“Peter, watch out!” Yaël still shouted. Somehow, Peter managed to pull Wade away from the steering wheel. As a reflex, Yaël tried to get to the oil of the car, trying to steer it, pull it from the car and use it to push the lady aside. While steering her powers, she felt the car brake roughly. Yaël looked up and saw Peter shooting webs out of the window, but she kept focusing of the old lady.

Yaël couldn’t see the woman anymore as the turned and screeched by Peter using his webs to try to stop the vehicle. Something flew of the roof, probably that Wolverine-thing and that was exactly when Yaël had the feeling they started flying…in a bad way.

Peter yelled at Yaël to hold tight, warning her for a crash. So Yaël grabbed whatever she could, hoping they wouldn’t die in the car crash. Yaël felt a blow, pieces of glass were making cuts everywhere. The crash made noises that gave Yaël the feeling she’d get deaf. Was she seeing fireworks now? Holy shit, it was the roof scraping over the asphalt! Yaël heard Peter groan and looked around. They stopped moving, yet Yaël’s body felt like she was still in the middle of a turbulence. She looked at her hands and saw glass sticking out of the rug of her hand here and there. Everything hurt while trying to escape from the vehicle, but Yaël got so nervous, her hands trembled as she tried to click the seatbelt open, so it took a few attempts.

Someone gave her a hand as she tried to climb out of the window. People were gathering, taking pictures.

Peter, who looked like he had just survived a natural disaster, was staring at the building they crashed in front of. “Stark Industries…” Yaël read the big letters above the automatic doors. He looked a bit confused.

“Go to the interview! I’ll see you in the lobby after I get Wade out of there!” Yaël gave him a gentle push against his back. His clothes were all messed up and his suit was showing a bit, Yaël noticed. So she did what she could to make him look more…well, less scrambled. She sleeked his shirt and buttoned his collar back up. Peter thanked her and ran off, trying to get to his interview on time.

Right, so what now? Someone probably already called for an ambulance. Yaël walked back to the crashed car and saw Wade, already trying to crawl out of it. Some people were actually puking from looking at his completely disfigured face, which was already healing too. She could hear sirens coming closer.

“WADE,” she yelled at him once he fully got out and stood up.

“Oh, now I’m gonna get it…” he mumbled to a random woman standing next to him, who looked at Wade with utter disgrace and confusion. Yaël stamped towards him.

“I SHOULD PUT YOU IN AN ENORMOUS BLENDER AND LET YOU DIE AGAIN AND AGAIN FOR ETERNITY!” Yaël poked against his chest while barking.

“Yaël, sweet honey-“ Wade looked a bit frightened.

“DO YOU REALLY WANT US TO DIE?!”

“B-but, you can’t die, sugarpie-“

“OF COURSE I CAN DIE, WADE! I FEEL PAIN AS MUCH AS ANYONE DOES!”

“Y-yeah, but you can’t die…”

“What are you talking about?” Her confusion made her calm down a bit.

“Do you really think someone completely mortal, like humans, can survive an outrageous smash from the Hulk? I mean…”

“But I was in a coma for months!”

“You still survived.”

He had a point there, didn’t he? She never looked at it that way. She surely didn’t feel immortal, with all the cuts and bruises from the accident, aching and bleeding everywhere. Yaël breathed in before she started poking him against his chest again.

“Still, Peter could’ve died by this stupidity of yours,” even though she was the one who told Peter to get in. This was all her fault… “You clean up this mess, you hear me? And you make sure Fury never finds out I had anything to do with this, or I’ll have no electricity for a month,” she hissed.

The ambulance stopped right in front of her, immediately someone jumped out of it and guided her to the vehicle to clean the wounds and patch her up. Only a second later, the police arrived, and Wade got questioned. Probably because they immediately recognized him from other weird ‘accidents’ or crimes. After a total check-up, a few questions and quick tests, they let Yaël go.

 

 

“You come out of that accident too?!” The lobbyist noticed her as soon as she walked into the modern-looking building.

“Yeah…A friend of mine walked in like an hour ago for an interview with Tony Stark, are they still busy?” The receptionist nodded, left his desk and guided her to an empty waiting area with comfortable chairs, somewhere in a remote corner of the first floor. He gave her some water and told her she could always refill her cup at the water-reservoir against the wall. As soon as the man left again, Yaël kicked off her shoes and let her ears fill with quietness.

After a little while of just staring at a complicated painting hanging on the wall, Yaël’s hand suddenly hurt. She looked down and saw that she unwittingly had put her cup on glass the table in front of her and she had started scratching the rug of her left hand. A handling that always indicated that Yaël was panicking. It was a reaction from the accident. Even though she always tried to hide it, panic was a common trait of hers.

When X visited her to help her out with the dream, she had been cleaning all day, trying not to scratch her own hand open. So Yaël needed to distract herself. After pulling off her socks too, she started walking around in the room, barefoot on the cold tiles. While walking around, she picked up a magazine and started looking at pretty clothes.

“Can I help you?” Yaël jumped and accidentally dropped the magazine as a random guy started talking behind her. She turned around and what she saw made shocked her so much she ran against the leg of one of the tables. She grabbed her toe and jumped around on one foot for a second, cursing. The guy who sneaked up on her was extremely handsome, he was a model, he had to be.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, miss!” he said while walking towards Yaël, motioning he wanted to help her. Yaël simply lifted a finger as a sign that he had to wait for a second before she was going to talk, still rubbing her toe. It gave her a second to indulge what she just had seen. The guy talking to her had long dark-brown, almost black hair knotted into a bun. His brown eyes followed every movement she made. He was tall and fit, not extremely muscular, but clearly sporty.

Oh and the cheekbones, his cheekbones were pure art. Yaël finally straightened her back and threw him a small smile, as nervous as she was, she really wished he’d just stop talking to her. Yaël sat back down and sipped from her water, trying not to look at the guy. It was almost funny how Yaël noticed she needed a lot of alcohol to be able to talk to gorgeous-looking creatures. Well, even then she skipped the gorgeous ones and she just went for the normal ones who didn’t stress her out at all.

Suddenly his hand hung in front of her nose.

“Jason,” he said with a modest smile. Yaël shook his hand and mumbled her name back. He sat down next to her. The whole room was filled with chairs, but this handsome monster just HAD to sit next to her. “So are you here for an interview too? I’m here for the job as receptionist, they needed another, extra one. It’s a busy company.”

Yaël shook her head. “No, I’m waiting for a friend who’s doing his interview for an internship.” Shit, she should’ve told him she was waiting for her boyfriend.

“Oh, your husband?” Jeez, husband, she was only twenty-four! But maybe she just had to follow his game and tell him that Peter, indeed, was her husband.

“Nope,” she said instead. Stupid honesty. Jason’s eyes twinkled a bit.

“So why are you walking around barefoot?” What did she have to say? Because she permanently needed to distract herself?

“I like the feeling of cold tiles,” she replied instead, feeling dumb. 

Yaël saw someone stepping outside the lift. Was that…her lord and savior, Peter. She jumped up and ran towards her friend. “P! How did it go? Are you, like, hired?” she started rambling, trying to escape from the god, who was still watching her.

“Yeah, uh…” Peter frowned in confusion, clearly searching for a reason why Yaël was acting weird he looked up and saw Jason, who put his hand in the air to say hi. The frown quickly turned into a cheeky smile as he discovered what was going on. The kid was way too smart.

“Don’t you dare!” Yaël softly hissed at Peter. His eyebrow cocked in response. “Good luck!” she said as she turned back to Jason and then started pushing Peter towards the exit.

“Uh, thanks, bye!” Jason waved back at her with a kind smile.

“What was that all about?” Peter grinned as soon as Jason was out of earshot. “Shut up, Peter!” Yaël grumbled.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the song 'Raido' by Wardruna.

Yaël and Wanda were playing checkers while Peter and Wade were looking at Wade’s suit. According to Peter, Wade’s Deadpool-suit wasn’t very complicated, but it was made of excellent materials.

When Wade had walked into the apartment with his suit stuffed into his backpack, Yaël had asked Wade what he was planning on doing, since she didn’t want to get almost killed by him…again, that is. He had told her that he brought it to sooth Peter a bit. At that point, Yaël had told Wade that if he thought that would help to make Peter forget his stupid actions somehow, Wade had to be dumber than she had estimated him.

But his plan actually worked. After Peter introduced Yaël to Wanda, a kind girl, Wade pulled the suit out of his backpack and Peter didn’t leave his side since then, asking questions about who made it and how it was sewed and stuff.

“Hah, gotcha!” Yaël plucked one of the black pawns, Wanda’s pawns, from the board and put it aside with a wide grin. Wanda frowned, but stayed calm. She seemed to be a sweet, but quiet and shy girl. The wait-and-see-type. It wasn’t hard for Yaël to like the girl, as she immediately proposed to bring nail polish next Friday, after Yaël had been complimenting her for her neatly polished nails. 

Wanda’s frown disappeared as she looked at something behind Yaël. So Yaël turned around and saw Peter trying on the Deadpool-suit, only wearing boxers and socks.

“Stop staring!” he yelled at them with a red face.

“Jeez, Peter, do you want my eyes to get burned by your reflective whiteness?” Yaël said jokingly.

“There’s a bathroom right behind you. Most people use these when they feel the urge of taking off their clothes.”Of course, Wanda’s reply was more morally correct than Yaël’s, but yet she deserved a high-five from Yaël for dissing Peter. The teenager glanced at them sarcastically while continuing to put the suit on.

They laughed a bit, goofed around and ordered some pizza, since Peter stopped working in the pizzeria as soon as he got the approval for his internship.

That’s how the weeks went on; Yaël went to work and played some cello and she saw her friends every now and then. Well, Wade still walked in whenever he liked too, and so did Wanda after a while, just to hang out. Wanda was one of these friends you don’t need to constantly talk to to be good friends with. So most of the time, when Wanda came over, she just got sick of the business of the compound, brought a book and just sat down and read a bit.

At first, Yaël wondered why the girl didn’t hang out with Peter instead of her, but after a while, Yaël noticed that Peter didn’t have much time since he started with the internship. Not that she blamed him or anything, she was glad he finally got forward and took the chance to get to know his dad better, even though Stark still didn’t know. Well, it wasn’t totally Peter’s fault that Yaël didn’t see him a lot as he asked her to join his patrols every now and then. But Yaël couldn’t do that as she was no hero. She didn’t trust her skills and her control enough to help people with it, so Peter was better off saving the town without her.

At some point, Peter had told Yaël about his past, the whole messed up stuff with Harry and Gwen… That was a true eye-opener to her. Peter was no regular kid, she always had known that with the Spider-Man stuff, but his emotional baggage was way heavier than she had thought. This kid grew up too fast, which explained his responsible behavior. But he also managed to stay kind and humble, of course he was also sarcastic, but he never meant to really hurt someone. So at that point, Yaël started looking at him like he was an equal, like he was twenty-four too. Not that she ever looked down at him, but he suddenly wasn’t a simple teenager anymore to her.

Steve, too, came by a few times. Sometimes he stayed for the night, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he was happy and talked a lot and his life seemed to be fun, though sometimes he looked exhausted, emotionally melted by things Tony did or said. Now, Yaël tried to be neutral about that Tony-dude, for Steve, even though Stark didn’t like her somehow, but every time Steve came over to talk about him, Yaël felt more and more sorry for the billionaire. He seemed to have a hard time, not that Steve gave her any details, but it appeared Steve really tried to take care of Stark and that happened to be an incredible tough job.

Maybe Yaël wanted to like the man because she hoped Peter’s dad wasn’t a total jerk, she hoped something positive would come out of all of this, she hoped Tony could make Peter happy and Steve too.

Sometimes Steve was confused and tried looking for answers, so Yaël put on documentaries about same-sex marriages or about people coming out for their love. At these moments, Steve was so indulged by all of it, Yaël just did chores while he stared at the screen, frowning, his hands put together in front of his mouth so his thumbs unwittingly scratched his lips and his elbows leaned on his knees.

Yaël tried ignore her own frustration during the past few days. She still had no answer to where she came from. X had to be busy or simply forgot about her, because he never called back and Yaël didn’t dare to stalk him about it. So waiting for a dream was all she could do, hoping the dream would give her the answer of course.

But there was something distracting her from the subject and Yaël didn’t know if she had to be grateful or not. Sometimes she woke up, noticing she scratched her own hand open. The scratching, that’s what it all started with. She was used to it when it was caused by panic due to circumstances, but now she busted herself doing it frequently.

Sometimes she felt her heart pound so fast and hard, she needed to sit down. Sometimes her sight started shaking and she had to wait a few second before it stopped. It was like her body was trying to tell her something, but Yaël didn’t seem worried as she never fainted or anything. Maybe she just had a lack of some kind of vitamin.

 

* * *

 

 

“What do you mean; he had a panic attack?” Yaël was walking home from work when Wanda called . “Did he forget his meds?”

“ _Yeah, I think so…I don’t really know the details, but apparently he fell off the building or something_.”

“So who helped him?” Jeez, who wouldn’t get a panic attack of that?

“ _Stark.”_

Yaël walked up stairs. “You have to be kidding me…”

“ _Nope…”_ Wanda once told Yaël that she had hated Stark her whole life and she somehow grew out of it once she had actually met him, so that man couldn’t be that bad, right?

“Is he okay?”

“ _I guess he is, he went to school today.”_

“Good.” Yaël kicked off her shoes as soon as she walked inside her apartment. She went to her bedroom and tried undressing herself with just one hand while holding the phone with the other. It had been a long working day and after installing a new fence in someone’s garden and painting it, Yaël just wanted to go to sleep. “I should call him tomorrow, shouldn’t I?”

“ _Hmm, Yaël are you alright?”_

“Hmm?” Yaël threw her shirt in a corner.

“ _I don’t know, I feel something…odd_.”

“Maybe you have the flue or maybe you feel that I need to take a shower.” Yaël said as she looked at herself in the mirror and curled her nose, trying to ignore her sight that was shaking once more.

“ _No…it’s something else, I just can’t put my finger on it.”_

“Girl, I’m feeling great! Well, no, I’m tired as hell, so I’m going to bed now.”

After they hung up, Yaël fell asleep quickly and finally saw that what she had been hoping to see passed weeks: the dream.

 

 

“Long time no see!” Yaël said as soon as she saw the tall, dark-haired guy again. He was wearing the cloak again.

“Hello, how are you?” he asked her kindly.

“I’m fine! So before you say anything else, tell me which planet we’re on,” she knew she sounded a bit arrogant, but she didn’t want to wait and risk waking up again.

“Ah,” he raised his hands, clearly amused by her tone “Welcome to Helvegen! Now that I told you that, you’re going to follow me.” Yaël raised an eyebrow and walked towards him.

“Well, you could’ve asked that more nicely…”

“You didn’t ask me nicely, either.” The man put his hands behind his back and started walking towards the woods. Yaël stumbled as she tried to follow his quick pace.

“So, where are we going?” she asked him.

“We are going to dig some more into your memory. Don’t you want to know how you used to live on this planet?”

“Well, yeah…but you’re walking straight to the town.”

“So?” Yaël snorted before she replied.

“I can’t go there, they’ll kill me!” The man looked over his shoulder with a wide grin.

“That’s exactly what you told me when I really arrived here, a long, long time ago.”

“I can’t imagine I really brought you to that town, did I?”

“Of course you did.”

“How did you manage to make me do that?”

“I can be very persuasive.”

“So you’re really planning on walking to the town right now? That takes like three whole days!” Yaël said after a while. She already saw the sun go down.

“Let’s skip a few days, shall we? I think we’re on the exact right spot now. Look around and tell me when you know what to do.” He walked towards a tree and sat down at its roots while leaning against it casually, keeping an eye on her like he expected her to suddenly remember her whole life. Yaël looked around, but all she could see was trees and bushes. “You know, you once had this friend here on Helvegen,” he told her while putting his arms behind his head “His name was eh…Horse? No, Gallop… No, I think it was a name in Norwegian. Of course it was, English doesn’t exist here. Maybe it was Hest or-”

“Raido!” Yaël started looking around, searching as soon as she remembered.

“Oh, right, the kid is named after a rune.”

“No, he isn’t,” Yaël replied while looking at the trunk of the nearby trees “Raido is not even his real name, but I call him that because of his obsession with horses. Since he was a little boy, he seemed to have a connection with them. He has a lot of respect and patience with horses so he joined the cavalry as soon as he grew up. Raido is not only a rune, it also stands for horseback riding, or just riding. It stands for a journey, well, at least it does here at Helvegen,” Yaël smiled when she finally found the right trees: two trees standing perfectly next to each other. A horse was carved into both of their trunks. “His real name is Rozenrød.”

Yaël turned and looked around until she found two firm sticks. As soon as she found those, she started ticking against the carved horses in a certain rhythm.

“Oh, right, the throat singing…” the man said sarcastically. Luckily Yaël wasn’t looking at him, because she could imagine him turning his eyes with a lot of sass.

“Hovslagtrommataktenslær. Farasvint med flyg-førhov. Hjartetfylgjer, tveimblirein. Ber du meg, eglovar deg. Ri ut, Raido!” she sang on the rhythm of the ticking. Yaël could swear she sneakily heard the guy behind her humming it along. It was the song she and Raido used to call for each other. The others of the cavalry knew that when they heard it, they had to ignore it and ride to somewhere else. That was the only favor they wanted to do for Yaël, since she was the banished one, but they granted her talking to Raido, nothing more. And that was already behind the back of the king and the queen.

They quickly heard the sound of hooves against mud and leaves.

“Dah, søbe Yaël!” _Hello, dear Yaël!_ A familiar voice yelled in Sil, the dialect between Norwegian and the old-language the elders still used. Raido’s horse, completely created from the water Raido was steering, stopped right in front of her before he jumped off. Raido was a tall, very muscular man, with a long, blond braid which began frown the roots of his hair. The rest of his hairwas cut very shortly, a bit longer than stubbles. He had a blond beard with two braids in it. Raido plucked Yaël from the ground and gave her a tight hug before putting her down again. “Lat meg se kikdeg!” _Let me take a look at you!_ His joyful, blue eyes scanned her. Suddenly, Raido stopped moving, like he was frozen.

“Heh?!”

“Don’t worry, Yaël, I stopped time for a minute for this is only a dream of a memory, you know?” The man behind her got up and walked towards her.

“Why?” Yaël asked him confusedly.

“Because English is no problem to me, neither is Norwegian…but that Sil of you people, it gives me a headache.”

“So, what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, just talk English to him-“

“-he doesn’t speak English!” Yaël interrupted him.

“Well, he does now. It’s a dream Yaël, not the real deal. We can adjust it a bit.” The thin line between memory and dream was complicated, but she trusted the man in what he was doing. “So before I press play again, do you remember why we’re here?”

Yaël didn’t have to think for long before she nodded.

“So, what can I help you with?” Raido asked her, it was weird to hear English coming from his mouth.

“Well, eh, this kind sir needs to meet the king.”

Raido’s eyes grew big. “Eh, I don’t know if I can do that, Yaël. He needs to get smuggled into the castle because he’s not from around here, everyone would notice. Well, where does he come from actually?”

“I don’t know, he sort of fell from the sky.” Yaël remembered sudden bright light in the middle of the night and out of the blue this man had been knocking on her door.

“That doesn’t sound trustworthy at all…”

“But he’s a good man, I think-“

“Oh, so that’s what you two had been discussing back then!” the black-haired man interrupted her.

“So what’s his name?” Yaël thought for a second, back then, the man once told her what his name was, but he never repeated it in her dreams.

“Lopt… It’s Lopt!” The dark-haired man said quickly, without giving Yaël a moment to dig up the name. Lopt? She surely didn’t remember that name… Raido frowned and pulled her out of her thoughts. “Yaël, I don’t want to do this.”

“Look,” Lopt said. Man, the name Lopt sounded so incorrect… “What if I told you that your lives, and the lives of creatures living on other planets, depends on it?” Lopt said while pointing up to the stars, which made Yaël notice that it was already night. “You mean Valhalla?” Raido answered.

Yaël saw how abruptly his movements stopped again.

“Could you stop pausing my friend like that? It’s freaky!” Yaël grumbled to Lopt while looking at the statue that represents her friend.

“I just want to inform you that I’m going to play dumb as I already lived through this scenario once and I still remember all of it, just so you can see this memory as it happened.”

“Well, aren’t you great…” Yaël whispered sarcastically as she saw Raido move again.

“What?” Lopt acted surprised towards Raido, picking up the conversation like nothing happened in between

“Not the whole cosmos is Valhalla- I mean, yeah, sure,” he adjusted himself a bit dryly after seeing Raido, a massive warrior, raising his eyebrow.

“Come on, Raido, you know the queen brainwashed your generation into believing in Gods who will punish or reward you for your behavior and deeds,” Yaël wasn’t afraid to discuss this matter with her friend. she had been doing that for ages, and it annoyed the crap out of him. “

That’s so not true! There’s evidence!” Raido sounded a bit childish, but Lopt interrupted them.

“Wait, he’s from another generation, as in, he’s younger than you?”

“Yes,” Raido and Yaël answered simultaneously, like it was extremely obvious. “It’s the beard,” Raido nodded. Yaël jockingly poked him in his side with her elbow.

“Ah, I’m an era older than you, cub!”

“You old lady!” Raido threw back with a roaring laugh. “Wait, you guys count in era’s?” Lopt interrupted them again.

“Yes, what do you count in otherwise?” Raido asked him a bit sourly. It was obvious he didn’t like Yaël’s new friend. 

“I’m three eras’ and Raido is two era’s, just like my sister, Nilla,” Yaël told Lopt. Wait, wait, wait, what? Yaël’s own brain just exploded. She isn’t twenty-four years old, she is at least a thousand years older. Wait, no…Yaël suddenly remembered something. She once counted her true age in years with a professor, who was he again? She could swear he was one of the persons she saw in the dream when she got kind of surrounded after breaking the cage. The one whose hair was turning grey-ish. What was his name again? She couldn’t remember. Maybe she could remember her true age? Oh, yes she remembered that, surely… she’s around the two-thousand years old. Holy-

When she looked back at Raido, she saw him staring at Lopt with an untrusting shimmer in his eyes. “What is it?” she asked him, but she already knew the answer.

“This man obviously isn’t from around here… But why does he understand Norwegian? And why does he know about Valhalla, but not in the way we believe in it?” Oh, right, Raido thought they were still speaking Norwegian… and he was asking some good questions. Lopt looked a bit surprised. But his face quickly started showing annoyance.

“Maybe because I’m from out there,” he hissed while quickly waving towards the sky. “So, you’re from Valhalla?” Lopt threw his hands in the air after that answer.

“Sure!” he grumbled.

“Then you’re supposed to be dead,” Raido threw back “And what’s dead, is supposed to stay dead. So maybe you should just walk into the kingdom and die!”

“Aren’t you listening, maybe I’m some kind of messenger with a goal!”

Raido turned back to Yaël with fire in his eyes. “I will guide him towards a forgotten entrance into the city walls, but you’re not going with him!” Yaël looked back calmly, as she already made up her mind. “Dear, you know he won’t reach the king or queen without me.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Sweet love, my oldest friend  
> Have we come to the bitter end?   
> No make-up, no pretend  
>  Have we come to the bitter end?   
> The bitter end"
> 
> Rag n’ Bone Man - Bitter End

There was something wrong. Yaël felt it since they started travelling towards the city walls. This dream was taking too long, why wasn’t she waking up? A few times it seemed like the darkness of the night was swallowing them, other times, Yaël’s eyesight started shaking again.

“Still, I’m sure I can reach the castle on my own,” Lopt’s arrogance pulled her out of her thoughts. Yaël and Raido simultaneously glanced sarcastically at Lopt, which made him raise his eyebrow. “You guys underestimate my powers…” he grumbled.

And everything froze again. Yaël turned her eyes and stopped walking since Raidowasn’t able to follow her anymore.

“What?” she asked Lopt, almost kindly.

“Let’s skip the travelling-part, shall we? Nothing interesting happens here, you know… We just walk into the city and leave Raido at the walls, get cloaked, sneak into the backyard of the castle and get in by using the door that’s only used by the lower servants.”

“Okay, so what do we do?”

“We just go further from here,” Lopt answered with a smirk.

Yaël noticed the change of surroundings and looked up. They were standing inside of one of the dark hallways or the castle.

“Hmm…good, with a bit luck they don’t recognize me anymore,” Yaël whispered as she knocked on one of the hundreds of doors in the hallway. She knew exactly where they were: The maidens’ floor. Luckily nobody opened the door.

“So this is the plan,” Yaël opened the door herself and walked in, Lopt followed her into the room as she explained herself.

Yaël’s ears were buzzing in the same rhythm as her way too fast heartbeat. 

“Are you alright?” Lopt’s whisper sounded from afar while he was just standing next to her. After blinking a few times, she noticed a drip of sweat running over her face while she was leaning with her arm against a wall. How long was she already standing there like that?

She nodded as she pushed herself away from the wall and started walking again, they were almost there. After walking down a few stairs and going through a few hallways, passing a few corners, Yaël stopped Lopt for a second to put on the bandage around her eyes. Before that, she had been walking with her head down so nobody who passed her could see her eyes.

She signed at the black-haired man to follow her, using her one hand to follow the walls and the other to pull the cord with which Lopt’s hands were bound. After the next corner had to be the huge, wooden doors with two guards in front of them. As soon as the guards saw them, they raised their elements just out of precaution. Yaël heard one’s air turning like wind and the other one’s steered fire crackle.

“Who are you and why are here?” one of them, she guessed the one steering air, asked as soon as Yaël and Lopt were closer.

“My name is Isse,” Yaël changed her name into a Norwegian one, since the queen forced everyone in the city to change their names to Norwegian or at least Sil names as soon as her reign had started. Using her own name would’ve been the dumbest move ever, because she must be the only one in the realm with still a name from before the Queen’s Era. “And I found this thief as he was trying to break into the Royal Library!”

Raido had told her that the Royal Library was the most important room in the whole building, for all the secrets of whole Helvegen were written and kept there.

“What happened to the Library-guards?” the other guard asked suspiciously. Yaël simply let her finger glide against her throat.

“So, a blind maid captured a skilled thief?”

Yaël straightened her back. “Uh, blind but not unskilled, sir.”

“Great,” one of the guards mumbled. The other one snickered. “Okay, whatever, Audun, you go check on the library guards and place new ones, I’ll bring those two to the king.”

It worked, it somehow actually worked! Yaël thought as she heard the doors open. Yaël followed the sound of the guard’s footsteps and pulled Lopt behind her. Her heart raced so faced that she started feeling nauseous.

“Your Majesty,” Yaël bumped up the guard as he abruptly stopped walking. He was probably standing in front of the throne. The guard sighed a bit annoyed before he finished his sentence. “This is one of the maids, Isse, and she claims she has captured this thief, sir.” The buzz in her ear went louder and turned into some kind of beep. _Yaël_ , she repeatedly heard her own name, said by different persons who weren’t even there like Steve and X, but also Raido.

“That’s a problem, sir,” someone in front of her said. It wasn’t the king talking, it was the counselor…Shit!

“Why, sir Calder?” the king asked his counselor. Well, at least the king was present.

“Because the maid Isse is a blonde and she surely isn’t blind.”

Lopt pulled the rope backwards so Yaël bumped into him this time.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her again while Yaël unwillingly leaned against him and tried to get away from him again.

“I-I don’t f-feel so well…” Yaël stuttered.

“Don’t feel so well? Yaël, you look like you’re going into an attack, this didn’t happen in this memory…” He pulled off the piece of fabric she had bound around her head to cover her eyes.

Lopt obviously paused the memory again, since no one else reacted. Yaël saw the artworks become blurry.

“No, no, no, don’t wake up like this!” Lopt laid her down carefully as she wasn’t capable of standing up right anymore. His blue eyes looked at her anxiously.

Everything started flashing, colors were mixing and then everything turned black. It took a few seconds for Yaël to adjust to the darkness of her own bedroom. She was soaked. Her breathing became difficult and she started coughing through it. Moving felt like she was a boat in a storm. After finally getting out of bed, she fainted. When she woke up again everything was even worse. She tried crawling towards the bathroom, but fainted again. Somehow she finally reached a bin, which she clenched onto.

 

* * *

 

 

After what felt like a very long time, Yaël had no real awareness of time anymore, she succeeded in gathering some stuff. Rolled up in a blanket, she managed to get herself in the bathroom with her friends, a pillow, the toilet, the shower, a few bottles of water and a bunch of bananas so she would at least have something to puke out. But this was no flu. The flu didn’t make her heart race or her inhaling arduous. The flu didn’t make the room turn and it surely didn’t make her faint. Though she felt like she was boiling up, she shivered.

Sometimes she heard her phone ring somewhere, but even when it stopped, she felt like it kept ringing in her ears and everywhere around her for hours. When she fell asleep, she had weird nightmares. Yaël saw Raido pushing her into some kind of hole and shoveling dirt onto her more than once.

When he didn’t do that in her feverish nightmares, Raido just stood in front of her, tears running over his cheeks, asking her why she actually killed him. But she didn’t kill him, right? Not that she remembered, at least.

Other times when she fell asleep, when she was in good luck, someone was actually taking care of her dipping her face with a cold, wet towel and braiding her hair. When she looked up, she always saw blue eyes, sometimes they were Steve’s, sometimes Cem’s and sometimes they were even Lopt’s eyes. These were the dreams that didn’t make her panic and immediately start puking again as she wokeup.

Yaël thought she heard knocking a few times, maybe she even heard someone yell, but it was extremely hard to get a hold of the thin, hazy line between reality and chimera.

Cem stood in front of her one day, he made himself comfortable next to her and all she could do was cry. Once again he started braiding her hair, but this time he was whispering calming words in Sil.

“Dad,” there barely came sound from Yaël’s mouth, but her father heard her.

“Yes?” Yaël totally forgot about the Norwegian or Sil, but that was okay, it was just a dream.

“You won’t come back, right?”

“No,” the man said quietly. Yaël heard a blast somewhere. The sound of splintering pieces of wood sounded as softly as a drizzle onto a roof. There were tears in Cem’s eyes. “You know I didn’t want to leave you behind like that, right? Alone and abandoned in the woods…”

Yaël nodded, the lump in her throat made it hard to answer. A single drip of blood ran from his lips over his chin.

“Maybe it was my fault, I left you, maybe it was my fault what happened afterwards…” Yaël didn’t know what he was talking about, but she shook her head and whispered.

“No...” She felt like she had to soothe her father, but how could she possibly soothe someone who was dying? She could swear she could see his skin turning paler and his cheeks growing more and more hollow.

Yaël closed her eyes for a second, trying to get rid of the helpless feeling that was taking over. When she opened them again, she was staring into the eyes of a dead man, laying right in front of her. But it wasn’t Cem, it was Raido again.

Well, no, it was only Raido’s head. His neck stopped at a point where someone sloppily chopped it off off, with pieces of dead flesh still hanging here and there. Yaël quickly squeezed her eyes shut again. Somehow Raido grabbed her and started yelling at her to wake up. But how was that possible, he was as dead as possible. So she yelled back as hard as she could, maybe that would drift his spirit or whatever was stalking her, away from her.

“Yaël, open your eyes!” he yelled.

“No! Go away!” she screamed hysterically. But his voice changed, it wasn’t Raido anymore who was yelling at her, yet Yaël didn’t dare to open her eyes. Someone picked her up and carried her somewhere. That’s when she grabbed all her strength to look up, which she could only do for a split-second. But that was enough to immediately recognize the jawline of the man who was carrying her.

It was Steve, not Raido, who put her back into her bed.

 

* * *

 

 

During a clearer moment, she saw Steve, Wade, a random person and Wanda standing in the corner of a room, discussing something.

“-last time Wanda heard her was like four days before Steve and I found her, so she’s been like this for eight days already and she still isn’t looking any better!” Wade said, he sounded a bit pissed off.

“Look, I’m a doctor, not a magician,” the random person, doctor apparently, said. “I did the best I can do, I gave her a probe and an IV. But even I can’t find what’s wrong with her. You had to take her to the hospital as soon as you found her, but-“

“Look, sir, we’re very lucky she hasn’t accidentally drowned herself or put herself on fire. This is no woman you just put in a hospital,” Steve sounded more impatient than usual.

“She’ll probably start doing these things as soon as she gains more strength…” Wade mumbled to himself.

“Her powers are very shifty, I’ve seen her sick before and with just a flu she managed to burst a window.” Steve rubbed his eyes.

“Are you guys done arguing about this?” Wanda asked calmly. “I only walked in a minute ago and I can already tell you that this state of hers hasn’t a lot to do with physical illness, something is twitching in her head. And twitching is a very soft and kind word for what’s going on in there.”

Steve turned to her. “What? What’s wrong with her?”

“I can’t really reach her when she’s like this, my telepathy isn’t strong enough.” Wade pulled out his phone from his pocket

“No problem,” he said while scrolling “I know somebody who can.” Wade almost dropped his phone when it suddenly started ringing. “Well, what a 'coincidence',” he mumbled when he saw the name on the screen. “Yo, mister X, I just wanted to call you, you’re on speaker!”

“ _Something is wrong,_ ” the professor said immediately.

“Yes, very, very much so, yes.”

“ _I’m in the school right now and I can’t fully reach her… Usually that’s supposed to be no problem. All I get is…some kind of twitching. I don’t have another word for it_.” Wanda’s eyes grew a bit bigger, she had trouble hiding her proud little smile for being on the same line as THE professor X.

“What do you suggest, sir?” Steve asked.

“ _I’m coming over_.”

 

* * *

 

 

The blur around Yaël suddenly disappeared. She was standing in complete darkness. In front of her stood a man looking like he was in his early thirties. He had long brown, wavy, messy hair and pointedly grayish blue eyes. Yaël was so thunderstruck, she ignored the man for a second and threw her arms in the air.

“My god, the peace! It’s so silent in here!” Yaël laughed and turned around in a circle just once while sniggering. This restful place was so welcome, there ran a single tear from Yaël’s eye.

The man smiling widely in front of her surely had something to do with it.

“Sir, I don’t know how to thank you for this great gift,” her voice skipped here and there “If this is death, then I couldn’t be more grateful for it!”

“Oh, dear Yaël, you’re not dead. You don’t think I would let you go that easily,” the man chuckled while talking. His voice sounded familiar, almost…iconic. Yaël had to focus to not let her mouth fall open once she discovered who it was.

“Dude, I mean, sir… X, is that you?” Yaël muttered. X nodded. “But, I mean, no offense, sir, but you look so young!”

“Well, this surely isn’t reality, Yaël,” he said while waving his hand to point out the darkness “Anyhow, how are you?”

“Where’s your wheelchair?” Yaël asked flabbergasted.

“When I was about your age, I could still walk, Yaël. Now tell me how you are?” he always sounded so kindly even when he had to ask her the same question twice.

“Uh, I’m actually two thousand sixty-three years old, sir… And I’m happy to see you!” Yaël answered, still excited from the sudden rest. There were no flashing lights or chimeras here, nor did she hear permanent buzzing or ringing.

“Wow, that’s…quite an age.”

“Yeah, I recently discovered that in…a …dream?” Was the darkness around her melting? It looked like if Yaël would stretch out her arm to the blackness, she’d be touching a black waterfall in slow-motion. X looked around curiously.

“I have a feeling that your body is trying to block something out. It has something to do with that dream,” he told her once he looked back in her eyes.

“Oh,” her own body made her sick on purpose,that sounded weird.

“Just, calm down,” he said as he stepped closer to her and took her hands to stop the scratching. Yaël looked a bit surprised, she hadn’t even noticed she was doing it. “Now, tell me, what did you see during your fever? Did you see, like, chimerical appearances? Because these are probably the memories you’re blocking out.”

Yaël didn’t have to think for too long, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell him those things…they freaked her out. When she looked back at the man in front of her, she noticed his patience. How did she deserve a man as charismatic and sympathetic as him to help her while she didn’t even dare to say what she saw?

“No,” he said out of the blue. “I’m not better than you, we’re equals.”

It took another few minutes before Yaël started talking about Raido, because he was the one who disturbed her the most. The other people she saw, didn’t freak her out as much as Raido did. Her dad’s death was what it was, there was nothing more about that and Lopt… Well, Yaël told X about Lopt too, since he felt like a big question-mark. She heard the ‘floor’ under her crack, like the black material under her was actually made of stone and getting ripped open.

While she was talking, X was looking at her like he was searching for something, like he was examining her, but he stayed quiet. He only started speaking after she was done explaining her viewings.

“Okay, I think I found the issues in your memory, but it’s going to be tricky to dig into it without you slipping away again. So, I want you to listen to me very carefully. You do whatever I say, immediately, yes?”

Yaël nodded a bit nervously.

“Close your eyes.”

 

 

“Because the maid Isse is a blonde and she surely isn’t blind.” Yaël heard the counselor of the King of Helvegen again, which caused the return of the buzzing her ears.

“Okay, open your eyes,” X whispered. “I adjusted the language so I’m able to understand what’s happening here.”

This time Yaël wasn’t standing in front of the king. No, she stood in a corner, next to X, looking at herself, pulling Lopt forward. So this is what it looked like, the real memory? The king was sitting on his red velvet throne with his counselor standing next to him. King Eerikki had long, bond back, black hair with a grey flock in it. For a man who physically looked like someone who would be in his late forties on earth, he still had a great, muscular body.

His brown eyes followed their movements carefully. He frowned as he was thinking about his next move. This man was known as a high-intelligent person, but Yaël never expected his intelligence to be actually almost visible. The king looked at the people in front of him like they were a chessboard.

“That thief is not even from this kingdom, the only kingdom. That’s sure. Now, let me look at this girl’s eyes.” Yaël watched herself took a step back out of shock. Lopt looked at her confusedly. The guard grabbed her arm and pulled the fabric away with his other hand. When the memory-Yaël looked down, the guard roughly tilted her head so she was forced to look the king in his eyes.

The real Yaël looked up and noticed the paint of the biggest painting, the one behind the king, started melting and dripping out of the fancy framework. It was the painting of the queen: Völuspá. The queen was a stern looking woman with an extremely pale skin and dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was painted very flatly and it looked as black as tar.

The paint running down surely didn’t make her look more sympathetic, it dripped on the floor behind the king. X grabbed her hand “Don’t let go of reality,” he whispered to her, forcing her to focus on him for a second. After that, the painting stopped melting for a while, but X didn’t let go anymore.

“Well, who do we have here?” King Eerikki grinned foully. “The girl with the ochre eyes…What a surprise you’re still alive after all this time, Yaël.” Memory-Yaël wisely kept her mouth shut, but it was Lopt who took a step forward.

“I forced her to come with me, your highness, because I have an utterly important question for you.” Memory-Yaël poked Lopt in his side with her elbow to make him shut up, but of course he didn’t. “As you noticed, I’m not from around here, but I’m here with the quest to save this planet and probably other planets too. To do so, I need something.”

King Eerikki looked amused after hearing Lopt’s shitty explanation. “Oh, I’m curious, what do you need?”

“A special stone, that had been spotted in this area a few era’s ago. I hoped you have heard of it, it’s called the Soul Stone.”


	11. Chapter 11

King Eerikki whispered something to his counselor, who walked away after that.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” the King hissed to Lopt as soon as the counselor walked out of the door.

“I don’t see why,” Lopt answered calmly. The stranger somehow managed to trigger the king enormously by just telling him what he was looking for.

“You walk in here, together with the most disgusting creature of this kingdom, asking for an Infinity Stone!”

“So you know what I’m talking about?” Loki sounded surprised, though Memory-Yaël, well real Yaël too, totally didn’t understand anything of it.

“Of course I do, three era’s ago, we still had it; the One Stone, created by the Gods. Matter of course, the people of the kingdom didn’t know about it… They never knew. The stone had such power, it would have been a disaster if anyone knew and tried to steal it.”

Oh, so that’s why Yaël wasn’t able to follow the conversation.

“I see,” Lopt answered “But what happened to it?”

The king pointed to her.“She happened.”

“What?!” the two Yaëls spat simultaneously.

“Yaël, please don’t break my fingers,” X said softly, but she was distracted by the sound of the voice coming from her memory-self. It didn’t sound hoarse at all. It sounded completely different than her own voice.

“What, did she eat it as a baby or something?” Lopt smirked, pulling her out of her thoughts. But the king wasn’t laughing.

“Kind of,” he answered dryly. “She touched it and it somehow disappeared into her. Her body sucked up the stone, I would never believe it would be possible if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes.” The king sighed “Back in the day, Cem, her father, was one of my best guards, so I put him onto the job to guard the stone. One day his wife, Agostina, brought him some lunch. Of course she had to bring that spawn of hell with her. The kid touched it, the stone turned into some kind of liquid and just ran into Yaël’s skin. Gone was the stone.”

“What? But I don’t have any powers or anything!” memory-Yaël yelled. X looked questioning at the real Yaël.

“I thought I was born without any powers… That’s why I’m not always that good at controlling them, I gained them too late I think,” she mumbled.

“Well, maybe you were supposed to have a power, nobody knows… But the gods clearly punished you for making the stone disappear, and to make it clear to everyone that it was you, to make sure nobody would ever forget what you did, the gods turned your eyes ochre,” the king explained bitterly.

Great, so even her eye-color was a punishment. Who would think about that?

Someone knocked on the big wooden doors.

“So now I’m going to do what I had to do instead of banishing you out of mercy for your dad.” Yaël and Lopt turned around as they heard the doors open. A blonde version of Yaël walked into the Throne Room pushing forward a chained Raido.

“Nilla?” memory-Yaël’s eyes grew big as she saw her armored sister walk in.

“That’s my sister,” the real one explained to X.

“Obviously,” he answered.

“Quit using her old name, we don’t use names other than Norwegian or Sil ones,” the king grunted. “Now, Aslaug, please do what I called you for.” The blonde woman pulled out a blade, grabbed Raido’s hair and pulled it back. Yaël’s friend grunted as Nilla put her blade against his throat.

Yaël didn’t even had the chance to react before it happened. Smooth and quickly, Nilla slit Raido’s throat.

“NO!” the real Yaël screamed as she saw her friend collapse. His glass eyes stared to nothingness. Yaël ripped X’s hand away and started running to Raido’s body. She didn’t hear her memory yell “DIE!” to her own sister. She didn’t see how her memory self accidentally made a hand-gesture that caused the steering of blood. She didn’t see how her memory-self made her own sister stab herself five times, without even knowing how to stop it. The only thing she saw was her dead friend, her brother, laying in front of her.

The walls started collapsing out of memory-Yaël’s anger, but real Yaël’s sudden shaking vision and the sudden explosion of buzzing in her ears beard her down again. Professor X ran towards her. Grabbing her hand, doing everything he could to calm her down again. Once Yaël could breathe in a normal rhythm, he helped her to stand up again.

“This,” she panted with tears in her eyes, “is how my powers got released for the very first time.” Yaël wanted to look back at Raido, but X grabbed her chin and forced her to look away. So she looked at the king, who looked at bit shocked, but signed at Nilla, who quick and smoothly, even though she had just stabbed herself several times, crept up to memory-Yaël and knocked her down with the back of her blade. The castle stopped collapsing and started to immediately rebuild, as the king and a few of his servants were steering earth.

Lopt was still chained and looked furiously at the situation, cursing. “Now, bring her to her own grave, maybe her death makes the stone somehow return, and lock him in the dungeon, I want to ‘talk’ to him.”

The guard tilted her memory’s unconscious body outside. Yaël pulled on X’s hand so he’d follow her. They didn’t go through the hallways that led to the city, nor to the Royal Yard, no, they went to a dark corner that led to a lake. There, in the mud between the castle and the lake, the counselor watched how another guard had already shoveled a big hole out the dirt.

A few worms and bugs crawled out of the pile. Yaël curled her nose while looking at the grave, dug out specially for her. The only thing she could think about was her body rotting away, getting eaten by insects, deep in the ground…But the worst part still had to come. Yaël saw herself wake up again in the arms of the guard, who, without any hesitation, threw her in the hole.

She heard herself scream, not the hoarse scream she’d shriek out now, but a horrifying, clean scream out of pure angst. Somewhere Yaël accidentally let go of professor X and before the man could grab her hand back, she was already lying in the grave, being her own memory.

Shit, fuck, fuck! She tried crawling out of the mud. But every scoop of dirt the two guards threw onto her made her fall down again. She wasn’t fast enough to dig herself out again, shredding her nails by trying to remove the mud. It fell on her face, and after few scoops, Yaël couldn’t follow anymore in getting it away from her nose and mouth to breathe. Her chest felt heavy and painful, a squeak left her mouth as soon as breathing became impossible. And as if it wasn’t bad enough yet, it started raining.

In the complete darkness, someone managed to find her hand and pull her out. As soon as Yaël was somewhat freed from the mud, she looked into X’s eyes.

“Are you okay?” he yelled at her from above, looking at her, panicked. Yaël looked back down and saw her memory-self laying under her, not moving anymore. Yaël tried to swallow away the terror. “That’s not you! You’re clearly still alive, Yaël!” he pulled once more, and she followed him, climbing out of the grave. Once she was out of it the sigh she let out trembled, staring at the two men who were still casually filling up the pit.

Something made a sweeping sound behind her and before she could turn around, Lopt jumped out of nowhere onto the guards and eliminated them with just one smooth slash. His stealth looked mythical, inhuman, just like the grace and elegance he moved with. A soon as everyone was down, he picked up a shovel and started scooped the dirt away, also faster and with more strength than any human or Helvegian would be able off.

This guy kept raising questions, but right now she was still too shocked to think about it. The last inches of dirt, he removed with his hand after jumping into the grave. Yaël couldn’t see him from where she was standing, but only a few seconds later, she saw him climb out again with the unconscious Yaël on his back. He quickly glanced back at the castle.

“Okay, we have to leave this planet immediately,” he mumbled to himself. Then he turned around to the forest that cloaked around the lake and sprinted away, still carrying her on his back.

“Let’s go back,” X told her after wrapping his arm around her shoulder.

 

“Is she alright? Did it work? When will she wake up?” Yaël heard Wade’s rattling even before she had the chance of opening her eyes.

“Oh, jeez, Wade, please shut up for a second,” Yaël opened her eyes and turned to him with a wide grin. Next to her bed, professor X sighed.

“I wish I never had seen that… Well, I wish you never had to see and live through that _again_.”

“It’s okay, sir,” Yaël said as she put her hand on his shoulder, a bit troubled by the IV. “I had to remember it somehow, right? It’s a part of me… Now, can somebody help me out of this bed?”

“I don’t think that will be so easy. You see, you’ve been out for nine days,” X replied. “So standing up will feel a bit…wobbly.”

“I should call Steve, tell him you’re awake,” Wade said, already turning around to go and get his phone.

“Nah, I’ll call him, you help me out of here, Wade Wilson.” Yaël tried to sound easy and light, but the pain she felt seemed to crush her ribs and split her heart open. When she blinked, she could swear she could still feel dirt falling onto her body and she couldn’t shake the image of Raido collapsing, blood gushing from his throat. She couldn’t fool X, she knew that, but she was grateful he didn’t point it out, so she’d be able to fool Wade and herself a bit.

 _Thank you_ , she thought while helped her right before pulling her out of bed, hoping X would catch her mind. _Thank you for everything_. She was afraid that if she’d say it out loud she’d start crying like a child.

 _I’ll stay with you for a few days, if you don’t mind?_ That was the reply she got from the professor. Yaël did her best to swallow the lump in her throat.

After that, X said goodbye to Wade and before rolling himself out of the door, he turned to Yaël with his typical sweet smile.

“You know what’s funny? When you see me like this, you look at me like I’m the wise old man, the professor, the one you should respect, the one who’s ‘more important’ than you are. Yet, you are older than I am. Even when you saw me back there, with my younger features, you still seemed to forget that we’re at least equals.”

“It’s hard to forget that, sir.”

“Why is that? And stop calling me, sir.”

“Can’t you read that in my head? And what do you want me to call you? X? ”

“Sometimes I like talking too, Yaël. Charles will do.” He threw back.

“Okay, Charles, because you’re the old guy in the wheelchair who saved my life and who helps me out with, like, everything! You’re the almighty professor X!” she teased him.

X, eh, Charles, whatever, laughed, turned his wheelchair and started rolling down the hallway. “You’d do the same for me Yaël!” she heard him yell right before she closed the door.

 

She wobbled around with Wade for a while. Walking went tiresome after laying down for so long. Her joints hurt from laying down on the floor for four days. After that, her friend started to cook for her. Nobody could ever say to Yaël again that Wade wasn’t a great friend. Okay, he’s crazy, but she’s there when his friends need him.

“Say, Wade, did anyone inform Peter about this?” Yaël randomly asked him.

“Nope,” he said while mashing the potatoes. “Cap said you’d want us to leave him alone about it, as he is busy with his internship with Stark ‘n stuff. I think something is wrong there, with Stark, but Steve didn’t really talk about it.”

“What do you mean?” Wade added some milk.

“Well, he has been racing back and forth. He seemed stressed out, like Stark was in equal trouble as you were and he had to check on him too. Wanda went through that too, but she was way calmer than him about it.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Again, thank you, Wade. You’re great!” Yaël hugged her friend.

“No problem, honeybums, are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah, I’m going to wobble around a bit more and then I’m going to listen some music or something. Oh, no, I could really use a shower,” she waved away the problem.

“Okay,” Wade said as he picked up his backpack and put it on. “See you later, dear!”.

Yaël grabbed her phone after closing the door, trying not to fall. Firstly, she texted Peter to ask when they could meet. She doubted a while if she wanted to tell him what happened, but she’d be a real bad friend if she didn’t, right? After that, she searched for Steve’s number and dialed it.

“Yaël? Is it you?” Steve sounded tired, but hopeful.

“Hi, Cap!” she did her best to sound cheerful.

“Good lord…”

“You happy?”

“Hell yeah, I am!” his laughter made her smile. “How do you feel?” he asked. Why did everyone ask that?

“Uh, renewed!” She felt like utter shit.

“Good,” she could hear the man yawn through the phone.

“So…whaddup, Steve?”

He cleared his throat before answering her. “I’ve been busy… you scared me, you know?”

“Heh, yeah, I kind of scared myself too…” she mumbled, thinking about watching herself getting buried.

“Tony and you…you’re going to be the death of me one day.”

“What’s wrong with Tony?” She was glad he started talking without her askingabout it.

“He overdosed last Thursday…the same day you got, you know…stuck in your dream.” Holy shit, an overdose?! Of what? Yaël didn’t ask, it was none of her business. But she couldn’t help being curious, though.

“Does Peter know? About Stark, I mean?” she asked without thinking it through.

“Uh, yeah, he kind of saved the man. Peter somehow opened the doors, even though Tony had told FRIDAY not to let anyone in. Why?”

Oh, shit, right, the man still didn’t know Tony was Peter’s father. “Uh, just because, his internship, you know…” she tried saving herself. Luckily Steve was tired enough to just go with her flow.

“Right, is it okay for me to come by tomorrow? I could really use some sleep right now and I want to see how horrible you look in real life right now. I can’t stay too long, though…I need to do my shift of watching Tony.”

“What?! Excuse me, I never look horrible, I’m fabulous!” Yaël said fictitiously-insulted. It was sweet to hear that Steve was still bad with thinking through his words when he’s tired.

“Huh…?”

“Cap, please, go to bed,” she ended the conversation dryly.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "And in my dreams I meet the ghosts of all the people who've come and gone.   
> Memories they seem to show up so quick but they leave you far too soon.   
> Naive I was just staring at the barrel of a gun."
> 
> Pink Floyd - High Hopes

Yaël was wandering around the city, trying to get some more of the stiffness out of her legs. She hadn’t seen Steve the day before. He had called her to tell her he had to leave town for a few days. It was for a mission, he told her. Those little stings in her heart she felt after he hung up, she tried to put them away in a mental box. Steve would call and meet her when he came back, right? There was nothing to worry about.

There was music playing through her headphones, but all Yaël could think about was the song she always used to contact Raido. Too bad there wasn’t a version of it to put on her music player. The walls to her side indicated a graveyard behind them. For a second, Yaël stared through the gates, looking at the graves.

Graves, what a weird concept; burying whole bodies. On Helvegen, the bodies were laid into a huge fire pit. The ashes were taken by the cavalry into the woods and freely flew out of the open bags as soon as the horses started galloping between the trees.

Well, everyone except the scum and the outcast. They just got buried in random places. Yaël looked down when she heard the crackle of gravel under her feet. Without even noticing it, she had walked past the gates, into the graveyard.

On Helvegen, scum got graves, on earth, normal people got graves.

“You see, Raido? There’s no shame in being buried. I mean look at this place! It has flowers and stuff!” she said to no one. Yaël was sure Raido got buried, since he had betrayed the king by helping her get inside the city. So yes, it was her fault he was dead, she indirectly killed him. “Look at this place…” she mumbled as she set herself down on a bench next to a chapel.

Yaël suddenly felt a soft flutter inside her head, it was almost impossible to notice, but she had learned to recognize it since the professor crept into her brain frequently after they both went through her traumas together.

“Hi, Charles,” she said. “Welcome to the graveyard.”

_Oh…this is not what I expected_ , Charles reacted back.

_Yeah, me neither._

It was quiet inside her head for a few seconds, but Yaël could already tell what was coming.

_You know you didn’t kill him, right?_

_It would be more comfortable talking to you in real life, so I have someone to look at, you know that, right?_ Yaël threw back stubbornly.

“Then talk to me.”

Yaël jumped and looked to her side. Next to her suddenly sat the younger version of the professor.

“Did anyone ever tell you how glorious your hair looked back in the days?” she grinned while staring at his locks.

“Yes, you, in your thoughts, five times already in the two days we’ve been communicating like this,” he answered her a bit dryly, trying hard to hide his own grin. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re flirting with the five-decades-younger-version of me.”

“Luckily,” Yaël straightened her back, “you do know better, since you can look into my mind.”

Charles chuckled. “That’s true. But I don’t mind getting such compliments on my age.”

“What are you thinking about?” Yaël asked after a few minutes of silence. Not that she minded the silence. She had just been staring at the movements the branches made when the wind caught them.

Since her illness, she started appreciating being alone and the silence more and more, because she knew what it felt like to feel, see and think about so many things at the same time it makes you feel your head is going to explode.

“Lopt, there was something strange about him, but I can’t put my finger on it.” Charles looked pensive while he spoke.

“Yeah, I know what you mean…” Gladly, Charles felt there was something off about the man in her dreams. The subject made her think of something else she had been wanting to ask him.”Do you actually know what the whole buzz is with that infinity stone I absorbed?”

Charles frowned. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that a lot and… I think you shouldn’t tell anyone,” he whispered as to make sure nobody heard him, while nobody could actually see nor hear his appearance.

“What?! Why?” Luckily Yaël had been too distracted to ask anyone else about it before.

“Because that thing inside you, it’s something we have to be careful with. Only Thor has ever spoken of Infinity Stones, mentioning that there are more of them out there, and each of them is different. They’re all very powerful and with that surely comes people or…creatures that are looking for them, no doubt with a lack of good intentions.”

“So wait,” Yaël tried to understand it. “There are more of these stones and there’s, like, a weapon inside of me?” Some guy walked through the gates, hood over his head, hands in his pockets.

“More or less, but I think you actually received its powers.”

“Holy shit…” Yaël mumbled. That sounded like no good news at all.

She agreed with Charles, she had to keep this to herself. If others would discover she was in possession of it, she could get in big trouble. Well, maybe she was in trouble anyway, maybe this stone worked like some kind of time bomb, ready to explode one day. It kicked in; no, no, she wasn’t ready for this yet. Yaël unwittingly put her hand against her chest as soon as her heart started racing.

Couldn’t someone just rip that thing out of her?

“I’m afraid that’s not how this works, dear,” Charles said. When Yaël looked up at him, she saw his eyes being wet from the compassion he felt for her.

“Don’t you dare to cry, Charles!” Yaël’s voice skipped as she fought to hold her tears back. Once more the professor took her hands to stop her from scratching herself.

“Look at me,” he told her. “We’ll make sure you’re safe, okay? There’s nothing going to happen to you as long as nobody knows.” Yaël nodded, jeez, she felt like a whining child, but she’d be alright, she knew that for sure, but not right now, sheneeded some time to recover from all of this and to let it sink in.

Her eyes caught the guy walking through the graveyard again.

“Wait, is that Peter?” It took Yaël a few seconds to recognize her friend. Charles let go of her hands and looked up. Peter was probably there to visit Gwen’s grave.

"And along came the mourning of another," Yaël sighed as she saw Peter walk to a certain row, like he was on auto-pilot. "He'll probably think I'm paranoid if he sees me talking tomyself like this."

"Don't worry, I'm making sure that everyone can see me," Charles said as he spread one of his arms on the back of the bench.

"Great, that way everyone can enjoy your great hair," Yaël smirked at him while passing her hair through his long, soft strands of hair, to enlighten the sphere a bit. But yet, she till felt the panic of this weird secret she now had to carry.

"You and your jokes about my hair...would you rather have that I plant the image of the senior, bald me on this bench?"

"Do as you please, it won't make me like you any less," Yaël shrugged. "Poor soul, so young and already in so much pain," Yaël whispered as her eyes followed Peters steps.

"Don't you need to go say something to him?" Charles asked.

"Nah," she leaned back against the bench "He has to do this alone. Besides, what do you want me to do? Happily run to him and kiss his cheeks hello...in the graveyard?"

"Or you could be honest about your own pain."

"Sure." Yaël crossed her arms.

“What could probably go wrong?” X asked her. Peter stared at the grave for a little while.

“Please, Charles, can’t you see the kid has his own troubles? I don’t want to bother him with mine,” she replied, even though she sometimes got the feeling she wanted to crawl out of her own skin, which Charles immediately intercepted of course.

“Your friends should know how you feel, Yaël.”

 

Maybe she should just go, she even had no reason to be there and she’d meet Peter later that day anyway. Right after just thinking about standing up and leaving, Peter moved away from the grave, turned and suddenly looked her right in the eyes. For a second, his mouth fell open, but he corrected himself immediately, waved at her and started walking in the direction of the chapel Yaël was sitting in front of.

“Oh, my- Charles did you make him notice me?!” she grunted.

“You don’t know that. Maybe he just happened to see you.” Charles kept looking chill, hanging on the bench.

“Hi, Yaël, didn’t really expect to see you here!” Peter said with a wide smile. “Who’s your friend?”

“Peter, meet the physiological illusion: Professor Charles Xavier!” Yaël said, remembering that Peter was flabbergasted when she once told him X helped her out with some stuff. Peter confusedly turned to X, Yaël could almost see the gears in his head turn. “He’s not here,” Yaël decided to explain “His just in your head, and in mine too, obviously.”

“B-but, you look so, so-“

“Young? Real?” Charles saved Yaël’s stuttering friend with a charming smile.

“Both,” Peter nodded. “No offense, by the way, I mean, you look great for your age! Eh, nice to finally meet you and, eh, wow!” Peter rattled, his cheeks turned red.

“No, it’s okay,” Charles grinned. “Now, I’m going to leave you two alone. I think you both have some catching up to do.” And with that, the professor disappeared. For a second, Peter stared to the spot the man just disappeared from.

“Wow, you guys are, like, good friends?”

“Yeah,” Yaël stood up and stretched her arms.

“What did he mean with us having some ‘catching up to do’?” Peter asked curiously as they walked back to the gate.

Yaël shrugged “I don’t know, man, that guy talks in riddles all the time,” she said, hoping her pokerface looked good enough. “So, how’s the internship?” Distraction. Distraction is good!

“Great! I’m Mr. Stark’s assistant now kind of, so we really work together and stuff, how cool is that?”

“Yeah, that sounds so nice! What are you guys working on?” she felt glad that Peter just hopped into the conversation she started.

“Well, we’re fiddling around, you know…Mr. Stark is working on some kind of cool suit for someone but he hasn’t told me who it is for yet.”

“How is he? Stark, I mean. Steve told me he wasn’t feeling so well.”

“Yeah, he has his highs and his lows, you know? But he’s taking his pills and such.”

“Are you still taking yours?” Yaël asked, just to check on him.

“Yeah, of course!”

“I think you guys have a lot in common, don’t you? It seems so obvious you two are father and son when I hear you talking about him.” Peter shrugged, but Yaël saw the happy smile on the kid’s face. He was doing just fine.

“And what have you been doing this passed two weeks?” Peter asked. Yaël looked down at the pavement. What was she supposed to tell him? She didn’t want him to pity her. Hell, she didn’t even want her own pity.

“Eh, nothing big…I’ve been sick for a few days.”

“Oh, what did you have? The flu?” Peter signed to a coffeehouse. “Want to have a drink or something?”

“Sure,” Yaël nodded, then she suddenly remembered something “Wait, I thought you didn’t like coffee?”

“They’ll serve hot coco too, right?”

 

“So, you baked in your own flu-germs for a few days, sounds like fun!” Peter grinned after they ordered their drinks. Yaël felt her heart sink, she couldn’t lie to him, right?

“Eh, it wasn’t really the flu…” ‘Conversion disorder’, that’s what Charles had called the onfall she had gone through. He had done some research, called and spoke to some big doctors about it and some of them weren’t able to tell him what went on with her, but others, who did found something, came up with the same result: Conversion disorder. That basically meant that her physical symptoms arose in response to her mental state, being confronted with extreme stress and trauma. So her mind started attacking her body. It surely sounded crazy, Yaël had never heard of it before, but it fitted what happened precisely.

“Oh?” Peter thanked the waiter as he brought him his chocolate milk. Yaël just nodded to the waiter.

“I’ve been out for nine days, Peter. Diego even fired me.” Her boss simply texted to tell her she wasn’t welcome anymore and Yaël read that a few days later, when she finally woke up again.

“Wow, what?! He can’t fire you for being sick!” Peter sounded indignant.

“Peter, ‘out’ as in ‘unconscious’, well or something like that, sometimes I was awake, I think.”

“What happened?” The indignation turned into worry and Yaël could barely endure to look at her friend like this. But she bit through it.

“I, eh, I kind of got stuck in one of those dreams I told you about.” So as she told him about the Conversion Disorder and everything that happened, she tried to make it sound like it was nothing.

It was a lot to take in for Peter, as she saw his eyes grew bigger and bigger with every part she added to her story.

“Wait, and you are going to a psychiatrist for this, right?” Yaël frowned as soon as Peter asked that question.

“What? No, dude, I’m fine!”

“Nobody would be fine if they went through something like that!”

“It happened years ago!”

“So what? You don’t have the right to mourn or feel bad anymore after a few years?”

“No!” she shouted back. A few people looked in her direction. Okay, she needed to calm down immediately. “Peter, listen to me, I don’t want to be looked at like I’m some kind of broken doll. You’re actually the first I told about what I saw. X knows it purely because he went through it with me.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Hell, I go to a psychiatrist too, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I know,” Yaël leaned against the back of her chair, rubbing her eyes. “Does Stark actually already know you’re his son?”

“No- huh, you’re not going to distract me from this!”

“Peter, please, let’s not fight about this…please?” Her friend looked up at her and seemed a bit disordered. 

“Oh, sorry, I-I didn’t mean to make you cry…”

“What?” Yaël touched her cheek. “Fuck!” she quickly wiped away her tear with her fingertips.

When she looked back up, she saw the other people in the coffeehouse stare at her.

“God damn it, Peter, let’s go!” Peter screened the place too, jumped up and put on his coat. As soon as they were out, Yaël snorted. “Jeez, Peter, we sounded like a married couple in there!”

“You know what? I’m actually kind of hurt you see people with troubles like broken dolls.” Peter clearly hadn’t forgotten what their conversation had been about. Yaël bit her lip, she clearly messed up by saying that.

“I didn’t mean it that way, Peter… I just don’t want people to look differently at me.”

“What are you afraid of? Do you really think I would treat you differently?” Peter looked a bit sad.

“Maybe people will belittle me or something, you know? Like I won’t be able to do stuff anymore…” 

“Yaël, let me assure you that I will never think you’re incapable of doing something just because you’ve been through a whole bunch of shit and you don’t feel so great.” Yaël smiled. He had a point there, didn’t he? Why would someone stop treating her like an equal just for having a troubled mind? Why would Peter, of all people, Peter, do that? That boy was the ultimate good-guy himself.

That, and he knew what she felt like, he had been through crap too.

“Let me give you the number of my therapist so you can call her whenever you feel like it,” Peter said when he noticed Yaël wasn’t going to give him a crossed reply and she stopped counterworking. Yaël sighed and noticed she started scratching her one hand with the other one again. She fluttered her hands to make them stop, but Peter was a way too observant guy.

“Why do you do that? Do you do it out of a stress-related habit, like those people who bite their nails?”

Yaël nodded. “Yeah, something like that. You know, if you see me do it, you’re allowed to make me stop. I’m not looking forward to a hand filled with scars. I don’t really notice it except for when I don’t stop for a few minutes, then it hurts of course,” she said with a smile. Peter nodded, he understood, it was some sort of signal for stress she unwittingly showed.


	13. Chapter 13

For three days after meeting with Peter, she felt comfortably numb. Probably because she told him everything, she talked about, but Yaël didn’t really overthink it, she didn’t really care. When Charles said anything about it, Yaël just waved it away. She really thought she was okay now, not feeling a thing, that must be the phase before going back to happy, right?

But it was on the fourth day that Yaël discovered she had never been so wrong. She had been staring through her window for a whole while now, it seemed like she was just enjoying the view.

But she wasn’t.

Yaël hadn’t slept for a few days and she felt completely drained. Every night was a struggle; on one side, she wanted to sleep because she felt exhausted, but on the other hand she panicked about falling asleep, because what if she’d never wake up? What if she’d see other gruesome things?

There was a bottle of vodka in her closet and some beer in her fridge and they were luring her. Yaël was very sure that it was the fault of the booze, they were calling her somehow. But she knew it was unhealthy to drink when she wasn’t feeling well, she wasn’t supposed to drink just to make herself feel better. Trying to distract herself, she focused on the people who were walking past the building.

She took a step away from the window. No, wait, she shouldn’t leave the window, it was her safe-space. After another step, and another one, and yet another one, she was already standing in front of her closet. Maybe there was a way to let X know she needed help, so she tried to mentally contact him, which didn’t work of course, since she wasn’t the telepath here. Her hand reached for the bottle. No, this was so wrong. Yaël quickly put it back down again.

She should call Steve! Yes, that was the best solution she had. But as soon as she took her phone, she remembered her friend was on some kind of mission. She could still call him, right? There was no problem with that. After scrolling through her phone for a bit, she found his name. But what if she’d distract him by calling and he got shot? That would be her fault, she couldn’t do that.

Or maybe she could call Peter. Oh, wait, no, he was still at school probably.

Wade! After a few bleeps, Wade’s voicemail started talking. “ _Hi, if I’m not picking up, I’m probably dead for a few hours. Maybe longer, I don’t know…depends on how dead I am! You can say something after the beep, but I’m not really sure I’m going to listen to it. Toodeloo!_ ”

Shit, he wasn’t even picking up! Yaël hung up before she even heard a beep while still staring at the bottle.

Yaël didn’t feel like she knew Wanda already good enough to spill her problems to her, so she wasn’t going to call her either.

Maybe it would’ve been better to go outside, but Yaël really didn’t feel like it, so she quickly grabbed the vodka ant went back to her living room and sat down. This wasn’t right, she thought as she put her forehead onto the cap of the bottle. When she opened her eyes, she saw the number of Peter’s therapist laying on her small table. This was her last option, she had to make the phone call.

After she hung up, she stared at the paper where she just wrote on during the phone call. Great, she had an appointment for tomorrow. Why didn’t that feel like a victory at all? She saw the bottle, that she had put on the table to write the appointment down and took it on her lap again.

With some fiddling, it finally opened.

When there was only a fourth left in the bottle, she felt a flutter in her head. Unable to think of anything else, she just send one word to Charles.

 _Help_.

 

* * *

 

 

Yaël put laundry detergent in the machine and pushed on the start-button. It has been three days since someone knocked on her door and drove her drunk ass to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. That someone happened to be Scott, the grandchild the Thompsons had been talking about. And Scott happened to be the one who, together with X, tried to train her, back when she was quite new on earth and still a bit unfamiliar with her powers, so she’d be more able to control them. These three days had been a whole ride through memory lane.

“And, how’s the earth-steering? Still causing accidental earth cracks? And the fire, did you learn to move it back to yourself to lessen the probably damage?” Scott had asked the day after she arrived, when she was sobered up. Luckily, Yaël was able to assure the man that even though she still had troubles with her powers, she had it more under control than when she recently arrived on earth. Apparently, she was a causing a lot of uncontrollable damage back then.

“Pssh, is that Yaël?” someone whispered behind her.

“Yeah, I haven’t seen her in, like, more than a year…maybe two!”

“I thought she was dead?” Yaël turned around and looked the two gossiping girls, who were looking at her from the opening of the door, right in the eyes. She cocked her eyebrow and crossed her arms. The two girls looked terrified and quickly ran away. There were a lot of students recognizing her and asking questions, but Yaël didn’t feel like telling her whole life-story to a bunch of kids. She quickly checked the washing machine again before going back upstairs.

Charles had noticed as soon as she came in, that Yaël wasn’t good at doing nothing. So he made sure she had something to do. Like cleaning or washing, which was kind of funny, because whenever she was stressing out she used to do those things too in her apartment. Charles had asked her if she didn’t feel like he was denigrating her with those tasks, but she felt comfortable doing it, it made her relax.

A few minutes later, she was making coffee for Scott, who was still giving a class.

“Hi, Yaël? Fancy a game of chess?” X gave her such a heart attack by suddenly rolling into the kitchen, she dropped Scott’s coffee. The cup shattered, and the coffee spilled everywhere.

“Shit, sorry!” she muttered as she immediately took a brush and a towel to clean everything. Charles chuckled.

“Don’t worry, dear. There are enough cups in this place!” Yaël made a new coffee and some tea for X too. After she brought Scott the coffee, she sat down in front of Charles and cracked her fingers. Well, she had never played chess before. She was used to playing checkers, which she did with Wanda sometimes.

Damn, she should give that girl a call.

“Don’t worry, I’ll remind you to call her,” Charles said, taking account with how distracted and confused Yaël could be. The man also frequently reminded her of the stress-relieving exercises, like meditating, the psychiatrist told her to do, and because she sometimes felt uncomfortable or slightly ashamed for doing these; Charles made sure there was nobody going to bother her when she needed her minute alone.

The man checked on Yaël taking her prescribed sleeping pills too. These surely caused her to sleep and, by chance, stopped the wandering into memories, which Yaël kind of kept from sleeping since she panicked a bit as she thought about those. And one can’t sleep while stressing out about sleeping, right?

“By the way, chess isn’t that hard. You’re a smart girl, you’ll learn it quickly enough,” Charles added. “Besides, did you answer Mr. Rogers’ text?” Charles asked her while moving a pawn. Yaël shook her head.

“I think I forgot. Can I…?”

“Go ahead.” Yaël took her phone and opened Steve’s text. Indeed, she hadn’t answered. He had texted her the day after she got at the school, so, two days ago.

“ _Hi, Yaël. I’m texting you so you know I’m back in town. I haven’t seen you since your illness, so please let me know when you want to meet up._ ”

“Charles,” Yaël looked up from her phone “When do you expect me to leave?”

“Well, I’m not going to throw you out, Yaël. I think you can feel for yourself when you’re ready to go back to your apartment, but if I were you, I wouldn’t go as long as you don’t feel good or stable enough. Maybe you should stay here until you know for sure the therapy helps you enough to be on your own again,” he said while staring at the pawns, clearly thinking about his next move. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t meet up with your friends. This place isn’t a prison, dear.”

“Hmm,” she looked back at the phone and started typing. “ _Let me know when you’ve got time, because I bet your schedule is way fuller than mine.”_

A few minutes later, her phone made a single ring-sound, but it wasn’t Cap who had answered.

“ _Sorry miss, but we already found someone to fill in the job. Thank you for mailing us_.” Rejected again, Yaël sighed. Great, this way she’d never be able to pay her bills. Well, she couldn’t even pay the psychiatrist, the one who should help her getting her shit back together actually gave her even more stress. She had been counting her saved money again and again, but it simply wasn’t enough.

“You know,” the professor pulled her from her thoughts, “You can still become a teacher and become a part of our team.” It wasn’t the first time he proposed this to her, but something held her back.

“You know as much as I do that I’m not a great example,” she said as she moved a pawn. X quickly shook his head as she was moving the pawn the wrong way, so she corrected herself. “Besides, what could I possibly teach these kids? I’m not even a mutant, let alone human.”

“You have your capabilities and talents, Yaël.” she looked up with a sarcastic grin.

“What do want me to learn those kids? Math? I can only do basic counting, the stuff you need to pay the bills and go to the store. Languages? My English sounds like I’m from gods-knows-where and I don’t think there are many kids here who want to learn Norwegian or Sil. I’m not a professor or scientist, Charles. Hell, I even never went to school.”

“That might me true, but I want to include a new subject in our curriculum. A subject that isn’t all about studying or homework. Something that gives the young minds a break, in a creative way.” Yaël cocked an eyebrow in curiosity.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, most of these kids live here. They train and study whole days, but I don’t want them to get sick of school, there has to be a fun, more relaxing subject for them to enjoy.”

“Okay, and what do I have to do with it?” X smiled in such a way, Yaël knew for sure the answer was going to freak her out.

“I want you to teach musical education and arts.”

Yaël’s mouth fell open. “What?! I can’t even draw, old man! And cello is the only instrument I can play, only because back in the days you practically pushed it into my hands.” Yaël had remembered that quickly enough as she had seen the cello she lend back then, standing all glorious in one of the hallways. Because, a whole while back when Scott and Charles tried training her, Charles wanted her to be able to lose her frustrations from the messy trainings in some way, he kind of forced her to play on it. This also kept her busy, as she needed to research a lot about the instrument since she was learning it all on her own.

“You’ll figure something out, I give you total freedom,” X snickered.

“That’s not fair, Charles! There are people out there who studied years for this stuff and you ask me, a complete art-failure, to teach arts and music education. I can’t even read musical notes!”

“Yaël, you don’t have to evaluate them or give them grades or anything. The students can choose for themselves if they want to follow this subject, like a hobby. Checkmate.” Yaël cursed, why did X think she was capable of teaching some angsty teens, if wasn’t even able to focus on a game of chess while arguing with him?

“When do you want me to start?” she grumbled.

“Well, I need to give the kids some time to choose and reschedule some stuff, so…the day after tomorrow. Please stop looking at me as if you’re going to throw the chessboard at me.”

Yaël snorted sarcastically to that and actually softly threw a pawn to her friend.  It missed.

“You’re hired,” X said while trying to hide his smile.

 

* * *

 

 

Yaël turned the chalk against the board again, looked at it and immediately wiped it away again. She tried again, but failed over and over. Then she finally threw the chalk down and looked at the clock. Okay, so she had been trying to draw a circle on the chalkboard for about twenty minutes. She put her hands on her hips and let out a frustrated sigh. Then Yaël turned back to her students.

“Okay, whatever, circles aren’t that important. You draw whatever the fuck you want as long as it is a mix of geometric and sketched figures.”

Some of the teens softly smiled at their teacher’s incapability, a few started sketching immediately, others thought for a bit before they started and then there was Wade. He somehow managed to get into the school just to follow one of Yaël’s lessons. Because he was already annoying other students before Yaël could even start the arts class, she forced him to sit all by himself in the back of the class.

Yaël wandered between the students, checking on what they were drawing. Of course every single one of them drew better than she did. Well, Yaël actually sucked at the both subjects she gave, but the teens didn’t care at all. At some point, X came in during Music Education to check how she liked her new job.

As soon as he had opened the door, he had heard Yaël yell “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DON’T KNOW FREDDY MERCURY?! I’M NOT EVEN FROM THIS PLANET AND I KNOW HIM!” she had signed at X that he had to wait for a second as she was busy with a ‘life changing’ lesson. So the fifteen minutes that were over left, she went through some of Queen’s greatest hits. Charles had been grinning the whole time. It wasn’t a question anymore, Yaël really liked her new job, just because she had no curriculum to follow or evaluations to make.

Her first few days as a teacher were almost done as it was Thursday-afternoon already. Arts was almost over, so Yaël started packing her stuff and told the kids to bring her their works, so she could file those per student. There were a few outstanding works, she noticed as the students kept bringing her drawings before they walked out. One drew a beautiful detailed hummingbird flying through a triangle and another sketched an elephant standing on a small cube. Wade was the last to bring her his masterwork.

“Well, what did you create today, Wade?” she asked.

“I drew Francis!” Wade sounded proud, so Yaël looked down at his paper. It was very quickly drawn and colored man, some sort of stick-figure, like a kid’s drawing. That man, Francis apparently, got shot by another figure that he colored red. Yaël turned her head a bit. Oh, crap, it clearly was Wade shooting this Francis in his head. 

“Well,” Yaël scratched her head doubtfully, “I admire the effort!”

“Yay!” Wade clapped his hands enthusiastically “Now tell me, tomorrow is Friday, what we gonna do?”

“You choose,” Yaël pulled out her phone from her pocket and started typing. “I’m texting Peter and Wanda. Now you move! I still have two hours of Music to do!” There were already a few teens walking in and claiming their seats, Yaël even heard some typical muffled gossiping and kids making plans for the evening.

“Okay! Byebye, Space Girl!” Wade said while humming ‘Wannabe’ from the Spice Girls as he walked out. Space Girl…most kids just called her Yaël, a few polite ones even called her miss Yaël, but a few, those who were all about fun and games, called her _Miss Space_. Not to offend or make fun of her, but because they knew Yaël was able to have a good laugh with them. At least it was better than Space Girl with the continuous Spice Girl-music added to it every time Wade made his dramatic departures.

“How is she doing?” Charles heard Mr. Rogers ask as they we’re going through one of the hallways, towards Yaël’s classroom.

“Quite okay, as long as she is busy. She still thinks a lot about it, but the psychiatrist is helping her out with the stress and the sleeping.”

“I must say, I was quite shocked to hear she was suddenly staying here. Did something go wrong?” X stopped in front of the door.

“Well, things just weren’t going that well. Nothing dramatic happened, but do we really need something really bad to happen before we help out our friends?” Charles said while opening the door.

“NO, WE’RE NOT GOING TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY THE GODDAMN FLUTE! Jeez, imagine the freaking headache…,” Yaël heard the door crack as it opened and stopped talking, or yelling. Standing there were Charles in company of Steve.

Cap looked a bit confused, like he totally didn’t expect to ever see her in this kind of context, yelling about a flute to a bunch of teens.

“Uh,” Yaël looked back to her students, many of them were staring at Steve with their mouth wide open, as the bell rang right after the two men walked into her class. “Okay, Icarus, it’s your turn to choose next week’s song we’ll be working on.” The teen with enormous, feathered wings, simply nodded before he grabbed his bag and walked towards the door. Right before walking out the door, he stopped and turned.

“Miss, may I bring my own guitar next lesson? Not to be rude or anything, but-“

“Yeah, sure!” Yaël answered him with a wide smile. Jay Guthrie, aka was a very modest and subdued guy, with probably more talent than her whole class together. Of course she understood he felt more comfortable playing on his own instrument instead of the ones of the class. As Yaël walked to Steve and Charles, someone, from the stream of teenagers trying to get out of the room as quick as possible, bumped into her.

“Yo, miss Space!”

“Surge,” Yaël noticed it was Noriko Ashida, Surge, as soon as she saw the blue hair in the corner of her eyes.

“Are you dating Captain America?” the outgoing girl asked her teacher.

“Of course,” Yaël answered dryly, which made Steve raise his eyebrow, not knowing how to react to that.

“Okay, cool!” the girl quickly grinned before running out of the class to gossip about it.

“Well, at least the kids will think I have a handsome boyfriend, honey!” Yaël winked at Steve , who shook his head and snickered, as she walked towards him.

“I would have never guessed you’d become a teacher.”

“Steve, my own students are way more suitable to give these classes than I am,” Yaël countered with a grin.

Steve and Yaël decided to walk around the big domain, enjoying some fresh air. It was quite cold outside, so they were both wearing their jackets and scarves. For a moment, they weren’t talking, just walking.

Somehow Yaël was afraid that Steve would want to talk about what she had been going through, what she had seen and why she had been sick. She wanted to talk about anything else, but that. Not because she was ashamed, but because she didn’t feel like it. The things that happened to her wasn’t the hot topic that Yaël wanted to talk about the whole evening. She was craving for other news than hearing herself tell that story again. It happened, but other stuff happened to other people too and she wanted to hear about that, shake off her own problems for a moment.

“I have news,” Steve suddenly said, pulling Yaël from her thoughts. She looked up smiling, unable to hide her relief. ‘I have news’ sounded like he was going to talk about himself. “Tony and I… we are to-tog-, well, we are in a rela- eh-“

“You guys have a thing now?” Yaël asked, helping out her friend who was clearly struggling to say he was in a relationship or together with someone out loud. Her heart jumped when he nodded. Yes, this was exactly the bright news she had been waiting for. Impulsively, Yaël giggled and jumped onto her friend’s back, clinging her arms around his neck.

Because of the suddenness, Steve yelped and almost fell down.

“That’s great news, Steve!” she cackled into his ear. Without thinking about it, Steve pulled up her legs and held them so his throat got more space to make sure she wasn’t strangling him anymore.

A few students passed, Yaël recognized Dust, who was always wearing a black burqa, because that girl followed her art classes. The teens looked with big eyes to the scene in front of them: Captain America carrying a teacher on his back like she’s a little child. As soon as Steve noticed their judging faces, his cheeks burned red and he let go of Yaël.

“Hey!” she grumbled as she tried to cling into his shirt, but that didn’t help so she still fell down. After Steve helped her up again, the teens were long gone.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“It’s fine,” Yaël answered as she tried to wipe off the dirt that was sticking onto her pants.

“So, do you guys call each other Sweety now? If you get kids, who will be the mom?” Yaël rattled while resuming their stroll. Her thoughts automatically went to Peter. That kid had two dads now, well, kind of. He still hadn’t answered her text. He was coming tomorrow, right?

“No, we’re still figuring this out, Yaël. We’re taking it slow.”

“Good.”

“I can’t believe anymore,” he added out of the blue.

“Of course you can, honey,” Yaël answered. She didn’t have a slightest thing against beliefs, but if a belief, preaching for hope and love, kicked you out for being in love, then there was something very, _very_ wrong.

“The church won’t accept it! Unless…” The church was no belief on its own, Yaël wanted to say, but she was curious what Cap was up to.

“Unless?”

“I don’t tell them.” Nope, nope, that wasn’t right. Steve shouldn’t hide his relationship from everyone.

“Are you ashamed, Rogers? Because you shouldn’t lie about who you’re in love with. Jeez, I think it would hurt Tony, man.”

“No!” Steve backed. “But... I mean… Tony doesn’t have to know, right?” Yaël inhaled sharply. What. The. Actual. Fuck. This was so not going to happen.

“Steve,” she hissed in a dangerous tone that made Steve look panicked, “I swear that if you are going to keep this from everyone, I’m going to visit Tony, even though he doesn’t like me. If the church is really more important than the one you’re in love with, then break up already, because- because…, fuck you!” Okay, her comeback wasn’t that great, but Steve seemed to understand the message. He looked a bit hurt for a second.

Yaël felt guilty, she shouldn’t be so harsh to him, of course this was all weird. She looked away, mentally cursing at herself. She should pick his side, always, right? Suddenly Steve grabbed her shoulder and pulled her against him, in a side-ways hug.

“You’re right,” he mumbled. “Maybe I should just stop going to church, right?”

“You can still believe without a freaking building filled with other believers and weird songs, Steve.” He softly laughed after she said that and let her go again.

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

Peter never texted back. He did excuse himself for the week after, but next to that one text, Yaël didn’t hear anything from him. That was until Wanda and Wade were one day hanging around in her apartment after they helped her move back in.

The three of them had been watching some series as Yaël told Wade and Wanda it was a bit of a shame that Peter had no time for them anymore. Not to talk bad about her friend, but it did hurt her a bit though, and what Wanda said after that didn’t make her feel better.

“You didn’t hear? Peter got attacked by the Green Goblin again!”

No, of course Yaël hadn’t heard, and who would’ve thought about calling to tell her that, right? Damn, she shouldn’t be so annoyed by that, Peter obviously had other things to think about rather than calling her. The poor kid was probably in pain, and here was Yaël, who was supposed to be his friend, feeling al sour about it.

“Yeah,” Wade added “I heard he was is a pretty bad condition.”

Wait, even Wade knew about it? Why didn’t she- no, no, she shouldn’t get angry about this.

“What happened?” Yaël asked, trying her best to keep her voice stable and her face emotionless.

“Iron Daddy and his Wonderteam showed up to save the day!” Wade chattered happily, his eyes glued to the TV-screen.

“He’s at home now, with his aunt, recovering,” Wanda added.

“Okay, is there something else I should know?” This made Wade finally look up from the TV. Yaël failed miserably at hiding how she felt. Of course, Wanda already noticed her friend was trying her best not to be pissed off.

“Well, eh,” Wanda muttered, “Stark knows he is his son now…” Oh, did he? Great! That was actually great news, but Yaël couldn’t hold her own sarcasm. She tried fighting it, she wasn’t stupid. It was clear Peter had been too busy and that he had been unfortunate to get into such an accident with Harry again. This had been no fun for him, Yaël knew that, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Why is my coco getting warmer with every sip I take?” Wade sounded confused and poked around in his cup with a spoon, like the spoon was going to present him the answer. Oops, well, luckily she had been unwittingly warming chocolate milk instead of warming Wanda or Wade themselves.

Look, she didn’t want to be so annoyed by this, so what could she do to handle this complication?

“Maybe you could just go and visit him?”

“Wanda, stay out of my head.”

“You know I can’t really help it… I just think that if the two of you would see each other more often, you’d share more. You guys are both not really big texters.” Of course she was right, Yaël hadn’t called him either to let him know she had been living with X for a while and that she had become a teacher.

The truth was, Yaël wasn’t mad at Peter, but at herself. She could have called him, or visit him randomly, but she didn’t do that, and now she didn’t even know her friend got attacked or how he was doing. Maybe he couldn’t sleep from the pain. Or maybe Stark didn’t like him either. Or maybe Stark just didn’t want to have anything to do with his son… Yaël didn’t know, because she hadn’t called him to ask.

“Idiot,” she mumbled to herself.

So that’s why she stood in front of the apartment Peter lived in the next day. Yaël had bought some ice cream, because ice cream made all the pain disappear, it was pure magic. She didn’t have to teach that day, seeing the job X gave her wasn’t a fulltime one. He couldn’t make her fill in enough hours with these two subjects to create a fulltime job. But she didn’t bother, a job was a job.

Someone passed her in the hallway and Yaël could’ve sworn the man was staring at her strangely. But when she looked up, he had already turned his head and was walking away from her. What was that about? 

The bell rang sharply as soon as Yaël pushed its button. Oh, this was so weird. She felt like a kid going on a playdate without being invited. Who knows, maybe Peter felt too bad to hang with her.

A sweet looking woman with cool glasses opened the door. She didn’t look like an aunt, or maybe the cool, hippie kind of aunt that only appears at family parties with incredible stories to tell… Was Yaël even at the right place?

“Can I help you?” the woman asked with a smile that automatically made Yaël smile back.

“Uh, yeah, maybe…I’m looking for Peter Parker?” Shit, did she have to call him Peter Stark now? How did these kinds of things work? “I brought ice-cream,” Yaël added, like it was important information. Stop acting like an idiot, Yaël told herself, you’re over two-thousand years old, imbecile.

“Oh,” the woman looked a bit surprised, “He’s in his room. You can call me May by the way.” Oh, so Yaël had been ringing at the right door, nice!

“Yaël- I mean, my name is Yaël.” God bloody damn-

“Peter! Someone’s here for you!” the aunt yelled enthusiastically. She quickly ran to a kitchen cabinet and pulled two spoons out of it, pushed them into Yaël’s hands and dragged her to the door of Peter’s room. Then she disappeared. The last thing Yaël heard from her was. “I’m heading out for work now, just shut the door behind you when you leave. I’ve put the key on the table, you can lock the door and put the key into the mailbox downstairs, okay?” Then the front door slammed shut, without giving Yaël a chance to answer.

Yaël knocked, but got no response. Should she just walk in? Who knows what a teenager does in his bedroom. She didn’t want to see that, so she firstly pressed her ear against his door. Nothing. Yaël put her hand on the doorknob and doubted for a second if she should open it, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Then she turned the knob.

Peter was buried under blankets, his hand was hanging out of the bed and his hair looked as messy as anyone’s hair would look while sleeping. Crap, what now? She should leave him alone, right? Yup, she should go, like, right now. Maybe she should leave a note? Yeah, that was probably a good idea. So Yaël left his room again, searching for a paper and a pen.

_Hi, you made me eat two boxes of ice-cream all on my own. Don’t feel guilty, I like ice-cream. Yaël._

She added a smiley after that. Then she sneaked back into his room. Where should she put it down? Probably on his desk. But what Yaël hadn’t been counting on, is that her friend left pieces of lego here and there on the floor. So when she stepped on one, barefoot, as she left her shoes at the front door, she did her best to not start yelling curses. Jeez, who invented these little blocks from hell?! Jumping on one foot, she accidentally stepped on a screwdriver, which rolled away and made her tumble against the floor, knocking her head against Peter’s chair.

Yaël heard a splash, followed by “WHAT THE-Yaël?!”.

When she looked up, she saw Peter sitting up in his bed, completely drained.

“Auch,” was Yaël’s answer. Dammit, she had been so quiet, but yet, her shock and pain had made her unwittingly blow up the water bottle on Peter’s bedside table. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she pulled herself back up.

“Are you alright?” Peter asked once he got over the fact Yaël had made his bottle explode.

“Yeah, wait, I’ll fix that,” she said and as she checked herself for injuries, the water ran back out of Peter’s clothes and hair. The stream ran out of the room as Yaël mentally steered it to the sink in the kitchen. Well, maybe she should start training again, since she just almost drowned Peter in his sleep.

“Thanks,” Peter climbed out of bed, grunting a bit from being sore. Yaël nodded, watching him move carefully. Did he want her to help him or not? What did she need to do in such a situation? Maybe he’d rather get out of bed on his own, or maybe it’d be kind of her to support him or something… So instead of doing anything at all, Yaël kept staring at him awkwardly, relieved as he finally got out. Besides, that slight scruff he got going on was kind of fascinating. It had always been hard to imagine Peter with facial hair.

“That ice-cream probably looks like a cold soup right now,” Peter said as he walked to the living room.

“Nah,” Yaël sat down in the sofa, next to him “I’ve been keeping it cold the whole time. I brought some old Superman-movies, by the way!” After fishing out the ice-cream, Yaël dug the DVDs out of her backpack. “I hope you like these? I don’t really know anything about it, but it sounded like a cool story.”

Peter nodded. “Because he’s an alien too, right?” There was instant regret on Peter’s face as soon as he said that. His hand covered his mouth and with big eyes he stared at her. “I suppose so,” she shrugged. This was actually the first time someone randomly confronted her with it and she totally didn’t know how to react to it. Should she be ashamed of it? There had to be another alien somewhere on this planet, right? She couldn’t be the only one. Maybe if she stopped taking her sleeping pills, she’d discover how she ended up on Earth. Or maybe she’d get another attack of the conversion disorder. 

Yaël got up and put the disc in the DVD-player and turned on the TV. She gave Peter a bowl of ice and a spoon.

“Shit, not only did I just practically threw that into your face, but I also just spoiled Superman’s origins for you!”

“No, it’s okay, Peter. Besides, everybody knows Superman is an alien,” Yaël assured him while throwing him a smile. She wasn’t here to make him feel bad. “You’re the first who actually says something about it, almost nobody knows this and the ones who do know, don’t look at me like I’m different. So, it’s okay this way, I still feel like one of you guys, but with a slightly different background-story.”

Peter nodded. “So you’d rather not talk about it?”

“I don’t want it to be a taboo, Peter.”

“Oh,” her friend thought for a minute. “So, are you planning on ever going back?” he asked her. She had told him the whole story, so he knew she wasn’t really welcome on her planet anymore, unless she was dead.

“Nope, I don’t think so,” Yaël answered. “How would I even get there? And, I mean, it could be the death of me, you know? Last thing I remember, they are hunting me down. Besides, what is there left for me to return to?”

“True,” Peter nodded.

Yaël looked at Peter in the corner of her eyes. He looked quite happy for someone who got almost beaten to death a few days ago. But then again, she wouldn’t feel any different in his place.

“So… what does it feel like now that Stark knows you’re his son?”

“Well, it surely isn’t as weird and awkward as I thought it was going to be,” Peter said while preparing his next spoon of ice.

“Anything different?” “Uh, I call him Tony now, instead of Mr. Stark.”

“Not on ‘dad’-level yet?” Yaël asked.

“No…I mean, there used to be another man I called ‘dad’, so it’s still kind of weird. I don’t know, maybe I’ll call Tony ‘dad’ later or maybe I won’t ever, it doesn’t really matter what I call him, right?”

“True, at least you have a dad now.” Oh, jeez, these words almost cut her own throat, she surely didn’t see that one coming. Yeah, sure, she didn’t have any family left, but she was used to it, to taking care of herself, right?

Come on, Yaël, she thought to herself, grow up, you’re over two-thousand years old, no reason to feel emotional for something like this. She ignored the fact that being two-thousand years was still very young on Helvegen. Luckily Peter didn’t notice her sucking up some feelings, because he threw her a smile and nodded.

“And what do you think about Steve?” Peter already knew those two were kind of together, right? He looked at her doubtfully, probably asking himself the same question about her.

“You know about it?” he asked.

“Yeah, Steve told me.”

“Oh, right, you two are good friends,” Peter reminded himself.

“Don’t you have a father-overload now?” Yaël joked, knowing that Steve already acted like a dad towards literally everyone. Her friend grinned.

“Nah, he doesn’t really act extra daddy-ish to me.” Yaël snorted.

“And they still don’t know you’re Spider-Man?” Yaël was on a roll with her questions, she actually hadn’t seen a thing of the movie yet.

“Nope, I’m not really planning on telling them that soon.”

“Why not?”

“How do I say something like that, Yaël? ‘Hi, I’m Peter, I’m not only your son, but also Spider-Man.I almost got killed to death by my best friend but that’s just what happens in my life since I’m a gifted kid who wants nothing other than to be an Avenger and put my life down the line, please consider me for your team’?”

“That’s exactly how I would do it,” she grinned. Peter shot a dry, sarcastic look at her. Okay, Yaël got it, Peter’s life was way too complicated.

“So, how has your life been? Anything interesting happened?” Oh hell, yeah.

“Uh, I’ve been living with Charles for about two weeks and because I didn’t have an income, he made me a teacher.”

“A teacher?!” Peter coughed so hard, the ice almost came out through his nose. “And do you and Charles are…have a thing or- I mean- I don’t know-“

Yaël snorted, Peter and his weird accusations about her being in relationships with her friends.

“Am I wrong or did you also think I had some sort of relationship with Steve the first time you met him, after he had stayed a night in my apartment?”

“Uhm,” Peter’s cheeks reddened, like he felt busted “Yeah, but…that’s a no, I guess?”

“That’s a no,” Yaël nodded.

“B-but why not?” he muttered awkwardly.

“What, why not? Why all these questions about my love-life, do you want a relationship with me?” she teased him.

“No!” he replied quickly.

“Yay,” she answered dryly, still playing with his awkwardness.

“I mean, you’re not ugly, you have a nice, if maybe a bit sassy, character, there are men out there who surely want to date you… Why wouldn’t you go for it?” Peter asked curiously.

Yaël wanted to counter him as he wasn’t in a relationship either, but he actually had a good reason for that, with the whole Gwen-incident.

“Uh, I don’t know… That’s not really my priority, you know?”

“Yes, but you sometimes sleep with guys, right? I’m sorry, I’m being nosey but I’m just trying to figure you out.”

Yaël shrugged, she had no problem with this subject. She had her needs, but did that mean that she had to be in a relationshit-uh-ship? She knew it would sound weird if she’d tell it to Peter like this, like she was some sort of slut. Weird or was she raised to never be loved? She grew up on a planet where every man knew that she was banished, where everyone looked at her like she was the devil himself. Yaël was supposed to never get kids, let alone a husband.

Once, a young-adolescent boy, about her age back then, came looking for her in the forest. Tricking her into believing she was special and beautiful, she naively took a walk with him and ended up in an open place in the forest with a few kids waiting for them. These kids were friends of the boy that lured her into it in the first place. She ended beaten up, her hands tied to high branches so all her weight made the rope cut into her wrists. The kids left her for dead and it took Cem a few hours before he found her forest-maze.

So every time someone tried flirting with her while she was sober, she’d just get away from that situation. She wanted nothing to do with love, as it was sickening and stressful. So Yaël never understood why people actually wanted to intoxicate each other like that, but it seemed to make them happy. Steve, for instance, was enduring a lot of pain caused by love, but he also made him happy somehow, so Yaël was supportive about it. That didn’t mean she’d ever be getting in a relationship herself.

Peter noticed Yaël’s thoughts had drifted off, so he decided to let go of the subject and her be wherever she was in her head.

The thing was, Yaël remembered some of her nightly _victims_ very vividly. Well, her thoughts actually always went to the same person. Yaël had never been in love with Barnes, but the both of them needed each other at that point.

There was a time that they couldn’t imagine a life without each other, being very close friends…well, with some extras of course. Her heart stung a bit as this was the first time she actually felt like she missed him. They were used to not seeing each other very frequently, and if they’d meet, it was always for a very short time. But it’s been a year, apparently. Had he forgotten about her? Maybe something was wrong with him? She tried not to wonder too long about it, as he wouldn’t do that either. They didn’t wind up in each other’s business as they knew they were both capable of handling their own business.

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Easter!

_A few weeks later_

 

“So, what are they both annoyed about?” Yaël heard Scott ask Charles. Like she couldn’t hear them, idiots. Steve’s fist flew to her direction and because of the distraction, Yaël dodged it almost too late. They had been training for two hours now.

At first, Steve let her use her powers against him, but then he told her she should be able to fight without them as well, just in case. So, for the last fifteen minutes, Yaël had been punched around by a supersoldier.

Now, normally, Steve would be way more caring for her. But the man had walked into the training-hall of the school, looking exhausted and grumpy. Actually, that was no problem for Yaël as she had been angry already, too. The both of them, instead of having a friendly training, started knocking each other over again and again. Well, mostly it was Steve knocking over Yaël, but whatever. Her fighting skills without using her powers had never been very good.

Charles never answered Scott, probably because it was none of his business. That and Yaël didn’t really want to talk about it. She was annoyed for an extremely stupid reason. Before she had left Peter’s apartment he had promised her to keep her up to date, text her whenever something happened, make time to get together…

That never happened. And so, every time someone mentioned Peter, Yaël got more and more grumpy.

Apparently, his other friends were better than her. Whatever, right? But Yaël couldn’t help feeling angry about it. She felt like she wasn’t good enough for him. Yes, yes, the kid was busy, school and the internship with his fucking new father.

That father who was Tony Stark.

The man who was also very good in tearing Steve into many pieces.

The man who hated her without giving her a second chance.

So Yaël made up her mind, she’d look him in the face. She’d look him in the face and after that she’d make up her mind about him. Because she wasn’t like him, she was going to give him a second chance.

A blow went through her chest and made her fall on her back and glide a bit. Yaël coughed and blinked a few times to get away the blur in her eyes. Her chest burned and itched. It took Cap a second before he understood she wasn’t going to get up.

“Yaël?” her answer was another cough. Goddammit, he had her good this time.

“We should sto-stop,” Yaël sounded even more hoarse than usual. Steve nodded and reached her his hand. She took it and crawled back up.

“Sorry…” he mumbled. Yaël pulled on the neck of her shirt and looked to her chest.

“This is going to turn blue,” she said.

“Sorry, I forgot to hold back for a second.”

“You were still holding back a bit, otherwise I would’ve been unconscious,” Yaël stated, Steve simply nodded. “So, what’s up with you today,” she asked while putting up her thumb in the air to sign to Charles and Scott that she was alright. They went to get Steve’s bag and then they walked towards the exit, where the two mutants were still standing after watching the training like it had been a show.

“Tony,” Yaël bit her tongue to prevent herself from cursing after hearing that name again. “He always takes in so much space in bed. Like three quarters of the bed is filled with Tony and I have to sleep on the edge. It keeps me awake, but what can I say about it? The man doesn’t even know it himself!”

Okay, so Steve had just been extremely tired this whole time. “Why don’t you come over to sleep in my bed tonight?”

“Maybe…But I’ll take your sofa.”

“No, you deserve the bed, I’ll take the sofa,” Yaël stood her ground.“You know you don’t have to wait for me to invite you to sleep over, right?” she asked him as they passed X and Scott and walked towards the dressing rooms. “You can just walk in and sleep whenever you want.”

“I know, thanks.”

“I’ll give you a key, remind me.”

“That won’t be neces-“

“Shut up.”

After that, they split up. Steve went back to the compound and Yaël went to her former room at the school to take a shower. She dressed, grabbed her backpack and walked out the door. The second she closed the frontdoor of the school behind her, she felt the soft, almost unnoticeable flutter in her head again.

 _You’re up to something_.

‘No I’m not.’

_Then what are you planning to do in the Stark Tower?_

‘Just, looking for another job so I can fill in my free hours and work fulltime.’

_What is the point of lying if you are communicating with a telepath?_

‘Oh, jeez, Charles. Are you going to follow me on my adventure the entire time?’

_Is that an invite?_

‘Ugh. Whatever you want, man.’

Suddenly the young Charles Xavier was walking next to her. They passed the gate together.

“I’m not going to kill Tony Stark or anything, dude.”

“I know that.”

“I’m just…-“

“You miss your friend and you’re trying to go and visit him while meeting up with the guy who doesn’t like you.” Charles finished her sentence.

“Exactly,” Yaël nodded. “I figured that I’d better tackle my problems than just sit, think and whine about them.” Well, actually, Wanda told her to meet up with Peter instead of being grumpy about it, and that pushed Yaël to make some kind of life motto out of it.

Since Yaël still wasn’t able to drive a car, she had to take a bus. Luckily Stark Tower was so important in New York that many busses had a stop in front of it. Charles disappeared again as soon as they got off. Yaël walked in and immediately moved towards the elevator.

“Excuse me, miss, do you have an appointment?” the lobbyist asked as she walked passed him.

“Yeah, a job-interview with Mr. Stark! I’m sorry, can’t chat, I’m late,” she said without stopping. Yaël got into the lift and guessed to Stark stayed at the top floor, as a stereotypical boss should do. Before the glass door closed in front of her, she saw two security guards run up to her, only arriving too late as the elevator started moving.

As she got out of the elevator, she started thinking about what way she had to go to find the man. Luckily, she heard voices coming from the right side of the hallway. Yaël simply followed the murmuring sound and stopped in front of a matted glass door.

She knocked on the door and someone replied with “Uh, yeah?” Her hands pulled open the door. Yaël recognized Stark as soon as she saw him. He was talking on the phone but stopped for a second, since his mouth fell open as soon as he saw her. Yaël signed that he was still on the phone, so Stark started talking again, finishing his conversation.

The man had a very big, modern office with big window that provided a lot of light. His desk was filled with papers, but also with a few screwdrivers and pieces of devices. As soon as he hung up, he turned to her.

“Yaël?”

She nodded.

“What the actual fuck are you doing here?” he didn’t look happy to see her at all, but she hadn’t expected anything else.

“Glad to see you too, sweet cheeks, I’m here with an offer to make.”

“Whatever it is, the answer is probably going to be ‘no’,” he grumbled at her, but Yaël kept talking stubbornly.

“I already have a part-time job…what if I fill in the other part by working here?”

“What could you possibly enrich to this company?” he snapped at her.

“I have some gardening-skills. Just let me tend the plants in this building or some stupid shit like that?” Yaël kept her chin up and her back straight and just stared into Tony’s eyes. His eyebrows flinched out of incomprehension before he cocked one of them, staring back arrogantly.

“What’s in it for you?” he asked her eventually. For a second Yaël got hopeful he’d let her do it.

“As you probably know, Peter, who is also your dear son, is my friend. He’s a swell kid, but I don’t see him all that often. Obviously, I kind of miss him, you know. He doesn’t have a lot of time since he started his internship here.”

“So you’re telling me that it’s my fault your friend doesn’t want to hang out with you?” Wow, that one hurt really bad. Was that what was going on? Did Peter just not want to be her friend? Did she annoy him or anything? Maybe she suffocated him by visiting him after pierced by the Green Goblin… . No, wait, maybe Tony was just trying to make her feel bad so she’d bugger off!

“No, I’m just asking for you kindness and compassion,” she answered, trying hard to stay calm. “By the way, I want to achieve something else by working here as well.”

 _“Mr. Stark, the lobbyist informed me about a woman that got passed security. Apparently, she said she had an appointment with you but I can’t find the arrangements. Is she bothering you?”_ Yaël heard the secretary’s voice coming from the intercom-telephone-thing on Stark’s desk. 

“Well, she surely didn’t have an appointment,” Stark answered dryly. For some reason, the secretary didn’t answer to that anymore.

Ignoring all that, Yaël continued “Maybe I can make you like me a bit more, somehow. Well, or hate me less, whatever, that would be a step forward too.”

Someone roughly knocked open the door, it made Yaël jump and look behind her. Two bodyguards stormed in and before she even had the time to think about what the freaking hell was going on, they grabbed her arms and one of them said: “Miss, you have one minute to leave this building in peace.”

Yaël turned to Tony. “You could’ve ask me to leave, but that would’ve been too simple, right?” she hissed. Did this man really have such a big need of showing off his power, he’d just let his bodyguards drag her to the street? She ignored the fact that Stark looked a bit shocked as well as he didn’t do a thing to stop the bodyguards, with his mouth fallen open and his eyes wide.

Somewhere Yaël knew he didn’t wanted this to happen, but at this moment, she could only believe he hated her guts enough to disgrace her in this way.

And so Yaël stood up and told the bodyguards she’d let herself out. When she wanted to turn around, just to ask Tony a last question: why he disliked her so much, the bodyguards forced her to turn the other way and keep on walking. Guess she’ll never know, then.

 

She noticed it as soon as she walked out of the Tower. A group of people from across the street were whispering to each other while staring at her. The bus came immediately, so Yaël didn’t have the chance to keep on analyzing them. But once she got on the bus, a random dude frequently ‘subtly’ aimed his phone at her direction, like he was trying to take a picture of her. What the hell was going on with these people? Was it because of her weird purple and blue hair?

 

* * *

 

 

“You know what’s fun about hanging around in the school?” Wade asked while his wooden horse went up. They were sitting on a horse-mill, a classic one, made of wood and painted with pretty colors.

“The fact that you have more chance there to bump into Logan, so you can annoy the shit out of him?” Yaël’s horse went down. It was a white one with golden and dark-green detailing. “No, I mean, okay yes, that too… Wait a minute, he also loves to hunt me down! Don’t tell me he never annoyed you so much yet that you wanted to behead him!”

“Eh, not really. Well, I haven’t really met him face to face yet…” Logan, or Wolverine, whatever you prefer, hung around the school every now and then. Yaël had already seen him from afar a few times, but they have never spoken to each other yet.

“You lucky girl! Or unlucky, he’s quite fun when he’s angry,” Wade said with a wide grin.

“Fun for someone who can’t die, idiot.”

“Well, we still don’t know if you’re able to die since, you know, you survived quite a portion of smashing from the hulk,” he replied. Yaël rolled her eyes.

“Okay, what was the point you were trying to make here before we got so massively distracted by my probable inability to die? What else is fun for you to hang around at the school?”

Wade blinked a few times; Clearly, he lost the conversation for a second.

“Oh, right! Teenage drama! I love it!”

“Sick love, yo,” Yaël answered dryly. It didn’t happen a lot, but sometimes the teenagers got into each other’s hairs and dealing with angry, moody, hormonal, teenage mutants wasn’t always that easy. Most of the time it was X who calmed them down, sometimes by forcing their brains of course.

Yaël had seen Scott talking fights out with the kids too, he had a lot of patience for them. She, on the other hand, was very bad at comforting people. It was like the students could feel that, because they never went to Yaël with their problems. Maybe that was for the best. Yaël could imagine herself panicky patting someone on his or her shoulder to comfort that person and then trying to get away from the conflict because she wouldn’t know how to handle.

Of course, the former case of her trying to comfort a student might also just be the reason for their avoidance of her, remembering how she suggested one of the kids to listen to some song she found online, causing for the kid to now have an immense fixation on Norse culture. The kid actually even switched into an ancient Norse religion despite the knowledge that the Norse Gods are nothing but Aliens, as well.

Yeah, no, afraid that Yaël would accidentally convert them as well and accidentally start a Norse cult, they all stay clear, and she doesn’t have to bother with the drama.

“You know, like, Dust and Surge. They’re roommates, but damn they can fight! Surge is always like, ‘I like my body, so I should show it’ and Dust is like ‘cover upeveryting!’ and such! They are the worst roommates ever. You know Logan brought Dust from Afghanistan? She was a slave back there, poor soul. But on the other hand, Surge always lived on the streets. I don’t know whose side to pick here-“

Yaël let Wade rattle and gossip about the students for a bit. Suddenly the horse-mill made a ringing sound to announce the end of the ride. When she jumped off her horse, she saw parents looking judgmental at her. Acting like a complete grown-up adult must be so stupid, Yaël thought. Since when was sitting on a horse-mill a crime?

“Did you hear anything from Peter?” Wade asked her casually as he jumped off his horse. That name stung, that was how for this situation had become.

“No,” she answered shortly.

“Oh?” Wade said as he heard the bitterness in her voice. Stark had brainwashed her, because Yaël was sure Peter didn’t hate her…Right?

“I don’t know,” she said as she literally tried to wave away the problem. Wade would think she was acting way too butthurt if she’d tell him what was going on in her head. So, to change the subject, she asked him to repaint her roots. And as Wade has the concentration-width of a retired goldfish, he let the subject just pass like that, grabbed Yaël’s arm and pulled her behind him as he happily hopped to the store.

“Ooh, look at this dress!” Wade said as he pulled out some skimpy, deep blue dress. Well, actually, it wasn’t that reveling, it just looked like an extremely tight dress.

“No way, Wade, you’re never going to dress me again. Last time, your dress caused fights at a bar.”

“Yeah, because you were so extremely innocent,” Wade threw back sarcastically, holding the dress in front of him, like he was going to fit it.

“That color suits you!” Yaël joked.

Before she knew it, she was undressing in the fitting room. Wade kept throwing in clothes. Somehow, he knew her sizes exactly, which was a bit freaky as Yaël didn’t even know them herself. He was right, though. She deserved some new clothes. Being a teacher, she couldn’t walk around like a complete sloth, just because she didn’t have the money to buy stuff before, right? Plus, this was an excellent distraction.

Wade also elected some sort of silky, Bordeaux dress and a velvet, blush one. These were all clothes Yaël was sure she would never wear, but she wanted to please Wade as he looked so proud every time she fitted one of them. Next to these, she also got some new pairs of jeans, shirts and sneakers. “Jeez, are you teaching these kids how to become nuns or something?” Wade asked while she was paying her stuff.

“No, I want them to be able to focus on the subjects instead of on me,” Yaël rolled her eyes.

“But, come on, you have the body for it!” Yaël was kind of getting sick of hearing that, apparently, she didn’t look too bad. He never saw her with her clothes off (eh, right?), how could he know? But she sighed it away, no she couldn’t be grumpy about that, it was a compliment.

So she threw him a little smile instead, which he conceived completely differently.

“Whoah, are we going to make out now?” he asked he with a little, cheeky twinkle in his eyes. The cashier looked a bit horrified at Wade and then back at Yaël, like he was trying to make clear he didn’t want to see an avocado making out with some chick right in front of him. The spit-detailed-horror was clearly readable on the poor teen’s face.

So Yaël quickly grabbed her stuff and said: “You can join, if you want to,” with a flirty wink, right before they walked out the store. The cashier’s flabbergasted, traumatized face was still clearly viewable from through the window, as his eyes squeamishly followed them until he couldn’t see them anymore.

As soon as Yaël and Wade were out of his eyesight, they started laughing and didn’t stop until they were in her apartment, dyeing her hair again.


	16. Chapter 16

“Look, this is a circle. Yours looks like a scrambled egg.” Logan pointed at the figure he drew on the chalkboard.

“Wow, thanks,” Yaël answered sarcastically. She really didn’t ask for his help. It was Charles who asked him to ‘help her out a bit with drawing’. But instead of helping her out, Logan just grumpily walked in her territory, smacked the door behind him and immediately started belittling her. It was clear that the man wished he was somewhere else doing something more useful.

Yaël turned around, almost feeling the steam coming out of her ears, and faced her students.

“Okay guys, like this old man says, this is a circle. Just so you know.” These teens had been seeing her and Logan argue for about fifteen minutes, just sitting and staring. For them, this must’ve been the most hilarious lesson they’ve ever had. Logan’s sigh sounded more like a grunt when he turned back to the board. Yaël could swear she could hear him mumble something about ‘this stupid subject’.

“What now?” he growled at her, holding his chalk ready.

“Draw me a flower,” Yaël answered dryly, while leaning with her elbow on her desk. Who would think such a brute could draw? He told her he had ‘many years of practice’. She didn’t even bother to reply that she was older than him.

Something on the desk buzzed, so Yaël looked up and saw the screen of her phone turn on. Oh, someone texted her! She gratefully grabbed the device, thanking god for the distraction from the frustrated sounds Logan was making while aggressively drawing a flower. But as soon as Yaël read who send the text, she wanted to put her phone back.

Peter asked her to hang out. Now, all of a sudden, he asked her to hang out. Yaël scratched her nose. What should she reply to that? Probably yes, because this actually meant that he did think about her.

A hand snitched away the phone as soon as she started typing. “Could you at least make the effort to act like you’re interested? I’m not drawing flowers because I like it, nor because I like you.”

“You don’t like anyone,” Yaël replied, this man was good in making her grumpy. Logan didn’t even bother to reply to that.

After the subject, Yaël and Logan both waited until all the students were gone, like normal teachers do. They packed their stuff and walked out, Logan first and Yaël right behind him.

“Did someone ever tell you that you have an extremely difficult personality?” she smirked to his back. Logan didn’t even bother to answer to that. “Great,” Yaël mumbled to herself. 

“Yo, girlie!” Wade came out of nowhere and draped his arm around her shoulders. Logan suddenly stopped as soon as he heard Wade’s voice, Yaël almost bumped into him.

“Oh, hi, Wolvie!” Wade snickered when Logan turned around to face him. “Missed ya,” the big raisin added with a wide, playful grin. Wait, was he triggering Logan while she was standing there too? Oh, no, Yaël had nothing to do with this! She didn’t want the Wolverine’s wrath upon her, so she tried to escape, but got pulled back instantly.

“Wilson,” Logan grunted, he turned around again and started walking away.

Now, Yaël didn’t have a good feeling about Wade and Logan walking around in the same building. Luckily, she had a break and as she went to the kitchen, the place where all the teachers hung out during their break, she noticed Wade and Logan both went another way. With a relieved smile, she let herself fall down in one of the chairs. Scott walked in too, grabbing a coffee and before he could even ask while she was smiling, Wade suddenly sprinted in, wearing his Deadpool-costume. He tried to keep the door shut behind him.

“Not again,” Scott mumbled.

“Scotty, my man!” Wade yelled as someone behind the door was making such angry noises it almost sounded like roaring. How did Wade succeed in making Wolverine mad in the two seconds she had been sitting in the kitchen? Logan’s claws penetrated the wood, making splinters flying around everywhere.

“WHY DID YOU CLEAN THE TOILET WITH MY TOOTHBRUSH, WILSON?!” he growled from behind the door, his claws going downwards through the wood, blindly searching for Wade.

“Who said it was me?” Wade yelled back, not sounding sincere at all “It could’ve been Yaël or Scott too!”

“Oh, HELL no!” Yaël yelled back.

“NOBODY WOULD OCCUPY THEMSELVES WITH SUCH BRAINDEAD ACTIONS, EXCEPT YOU!” She was grateful that Logan thinking of her as someone who was less braindead than Wade.

“I don’t know, maybe the flower you drew wasn’t beautiful enough!” Wolverine suddenly managed to smack open the door, which made Wade fly back and crash against the fridge.

Wade jumped back up, grabbed Yaël’s hand, pulled her behind him and somehow managed to run passed Logan, back into the hallway. She looked behind and saw the Wolverine sprinting behind them, his claws made horrifying sounds as he made them scrape against the wall.

“Wade, do you have a deathwish?!” Yaël yelled at him. Wade looked back at her with a bit off-looking grin.

“Hell, yeah!” Wait, did he seriously mean that or was it just a sick joke?

“Wh-why would you-?” Yaël huffed while sprinting up the stairs.

“Because, hell, Yaël…Death is beautiful!” his laugh sounded a bit maniacal.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” they ran around a corner, into another hallway. Wade was way quicker than her, she was even kind of losing him. Until he suddenly stopped. Well, he didn’t exactly stop running, he just…froze. As Yaël looked around, she noticed everyone stopped moving. She couldn’t hold back the gasp as she saw Logan froze right behind her.

“Tell me, why are you running?”

Of course, Charles was the answer to this mystery. His younger version walked around the corner, with his hands against his back, like he was just taking a stroll.

“Wade- uh-“

Yeah, wait a minute, she had nothing to do with this. Wade probably just pulled her along because running away from Logan all by himself bored him.

“Goddammit,” Yaël mumbled as soon as she realized that. Charles inspected the damage those two had created, still acting casually, like he went through this daily. Well, Yaël could imagine the man actually did go through this shit daily.

“I think I’m going to dismiss the classes. You can go home if you want to.”

“Charles, I’m going to help you clean up this mess,” Yaël said sternly, as she didn’t want him to wave away her help. “By the way, did you hear what Wade said?”

“About Death?”

“Yes, I mean, maybe we should keep an eye on him…” Yaël mumbled as she saw Wade and Logan turn around, while everybody else was still frozen. Charles forced them to calm down and go to separate rooms, he was probably going to have a talk with them after this mess got cleaned up.

“I don’t know if that’s very useful, he can’t die.”

“But he wants to!” Yaël countered.

“Well, don’t we all want that one thing we know we can’t have?” They were walking through the halls to see what damage was caused where, just so Charles would be able to give clear orders once he unfroze time.

“Am I wrong or is wanting to die a very disconcerting wish?” Did Charles not get this? Even though Wade couldn’t die, it was still an unhealthy thought.

“Okay, I have an answer that will soothe you, maybe… What if Wade has met Death multiple times now, and he really likes her?”

“Eh, are you speaking of Death as a person now?”

“Yeah, sort of.” This was getting way too complicated.

“Are you telling me that Wade is best friends with Death?” Charles kicked away some gravel which came from a wall Logan had punched his claws through.

“I would say they are a bit more than just good friends.” He had to be kidding her, right? Was being in love with Death even possible? Wasn’t Wade hunting Peter, or is that just a distraction from not being able with Death?

Of course, Charles was able to make a complete chaos-dissolving plan in such little time. In only two hours, the whole school was cleaned, and some pieces were even already restored by a few strong students, guided by Scott, who seemed to be very handy. The more Yaël saw of Scott, the more she realized he was a real down to earth, domestic kind of guy. Kind of like Peter, but of course older and wiser.

After that, Yaël went back to her apartment. On her way back, she decided to get a sandwich, as it was already evening. Yet again, the moment she walked into the sandwich shop, people looked up and weren’t able to keep their eyes from her. If this kept going on, she’d be painting her hair back to her natural color: dark-brown.

Yaël tried to ignore the eyes that were burning in her back, as she looked at the menu, hanging against the wall next to the cash desk. She could swear someone whispered her name.

After she ordered her sandwich, she searched for a new distraction. An old television, hanging in one of the corners, caught her attention. A reporter was talking about some sort of war. Well, at least, it looked like a war, since they were showing explosions and demolished buildings.

“ _-back in 2012.But recently in January, someone again spotted the woman who caused all of this._ ”

Wow, did one woman cause so much destruction?

“ _This woman led the Chitauri into the destruction of a big part of this city_ ,” as soon as the photograph showed up the screen, Yaël gasped and dropped the money she was holding ready to pay as soon as her sandwich was ready. There she was, on the screen, in front of a whole store, no wait, in front of the whole city. A fragment started playing. Someone had filmed her, clearly with a cellphone, seen by the terrible quality, floating down from some sort of… uh…spaceship. Beneath her, weird alien-looking creatures were attacking everything that crossed their paths. Yaël saw herself steering flames into buildings, freezing people, slowing people down by sending gigantic waves in which they tumbled away.

She looked so emotionless, like she didn’t even notice what she was doing. Even though her hair had its natural color, it was clearly her. Yaël’s continuously changing eyes were striking. The noise of people yelling and screaming drummed into her ears. Everybody in the sandwich bar turned to her.

 _“-since then, people reportedly sent us photographs of this woman-_ “ pictures of her with the blue and the purple hair showed up. Momentums of when she went to the store, when she played cello and even when she got drunk in that bar with Wade a few weeks ago. “- _she is known by the name Yaël_ -“

Yaël never took her sandwich, she just turned around and ran out of the bar. She ran and kept running, she sprinted until she noticed a liquor store.

Maybe this wasn’t a good choice she was going to make, maybe she could handle this differently, but who would care? Her reputation couldn’t get any worse, as people clearly looked down at her.

What had she been thinking? She wasn’t normal, she would never be! Why did she hurt so many people? Yaël didn’t understand, her thoughts tumbled. As soon as she bought a few bottles, she started sprinting again, this time to her apartment. People looked at her, pointed at her, talked about, because she hurt their families, because she ruined their homes.

Why did she do it?

Maybe she didn’t know herself.

Maybe she wasn’t a good person after all.

And this was clearly the reason why Tony Stark and Nick Fury didn’t like her.

This was clearly why she had been locked up in a glass cage.

 

* * *

 

 

As soon as she run into her room, she slammed the door behind her and locked it. Her breathing went sharply and felt like a state between sobbing and hyperventilating. She ripped the bags open and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Her hands were shaking so heavily, the liquid dripped out of the bottle as soon as she pulled off the packaging and the cap off.

_Yaël._

No.

 _What’s going on?_ Charles voice sounded way too loud, like it was the last drip that didn’t fit in her head anymore.

“NO!” she yelled out loud, pressing her lips against the opening of the bottle. She threw her head back and held the bottle vertically, making the alcohol stream into her mouth like it was just water. It burned so badly, but she didn’t stop.

 _Please stop…_ He sounded miserable, but she told herself he was just disappointed in her.

Of course he was! She was a complete failure, a being that shouldn’t exist. Or maybe he was laughing. Laughing because he made her think they were equals. They’re clearly not. Maybe he had been laughing all this time for her naivety and dumbness. Yes, of course.

 _That’s not true_.

But by that time, Yaël was pouring down the bottom of the bottle, already searching for the next one. It didn’t feel good though, but that didn’t matter. This was what she deserved, she should be in pain, she should be detestable.

 _STOP_!

At some point, Charles words faded away. As if she couldn’t hear him anymore, because she could still feel him yell. She felt the vibration of his angry, desperate screaming in her bones, but she didn’t hear him anymore.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Peter. Yaël tried to read the text, but it took her a little while as the letters started dancing around.

  * _Hi, I areathispartee, plizjoing me! Thissthadrresss…_



Followed by a street name and number. She didn’t notice all the spelling mistakes, as she was wasted herself. This was genius, she was still pissed off at him. She was so going to join him at this party, to tell him her thoughts about him and to run away before Charles was able to send someone to check on her. Who knows how long Peter had been laughing with her ignorance. He didn’t like her, she didn’t doubt that anymore. Who would like the girl that destroyed the city?

Somehow she managed to do her make-up and floundered herself in one of the new dresses she had bought with Wade, because her drunk brain made it seem necessary to look good so when she’d be yelling to Peter, he’d be intimidated by her good-looking-ness. Of course there was no logic there, only her drunk brain that was glitching around. In her head, looking good plus being angry would make her seem like a goddess.

Obviously it didn’t work that way, as she was constantly stumbling over her own feet. Later, Yaël spluttered the address to a taxi driver. He kept on looking at her through his mirror. Probably because he was afraid she was going to puke in his cab. Or maybe he recognized her, maybe she set his house on fire during that attack. Maybe she killed his daughter. What would his daughter have been like? Yaël imagined the cab driver pushing a little girl on a swing.

Somehow, she got in this way too crowed and noisy living room. Who even lived here? Wait, how long ago did she get out of that cab? Someone offered her a drink, she willingly accepted it. Why was she here again?

Meh, who cares! Maybe drinking some more would help to get the image of the cab driver and his daughter playing in the garden, an image she created herself, out of her head. A familiar song started playing. The volume went louder as Yaël saw people gathering around someone. Yaël dived into the crowd and tried to get more to the front.

There he was, Peter Parker, vividly dancing to Rihanna’s Umbrella, and boy, did he have some moves. It took Yaël a little while of staring before she actually felt the anger boil, which’ sudden, fierce appearance was caused by the alcohol. She was going to give him a rant, a hard time! Oh, she’d make him feel!

She didn’t really remember what she was going to make him feel.

 

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

“How long have we been fishing?” Yaël asked her dad, as they were both sitting next to the lake. The moon was shining upon them, it’s refection danced in the water.

“Probably a few hours,” he answered in English, like he didn’t even speak Norse or Sil. But in dreams, everything was possible.

“What are we going to do next?”

“Bake some fish, eat, read a book… Raido smuggled a few new ones for us,” Cem answered calmly. He had always been a very serene man, but one with joy twinkling in his eyes.

“You’re back.” It was just a whisper, but Yaël immediately recognized the voice coming from behind her.

“Hi, Lopt,” she said as she turned around to face the black-haired man. She wanted to introduce him to her father, only to notice, Cem had disappeared.

“There’s something I need to show you,” Lopt distracted her.

“Follow me.” Yaël got up and curiously followed Lopt. While they were walking, they didn’t really talk much. It seemed like he was thinking about something. It was weird to see him back, as the last time she saw him was when he saved her from her own grave.

A shudder went through Yaël’s spine.

“You’ve been gone for a while,” was all he had said during the trip.

“Yeah, I’ve been, uh, sick…” she had answered. He had carefully nodded to that, like he had unraveled what she meant by that, faced forward again and kept walking.

Out of the blue, the environment changed. It went darker and darker until Yaël noticed she was suddenly standing in a cave, which lead to the lake.

“How did we get here?”

“I carried you here,” he answered without further explanation. But Yaël knew that it meant Lopt had climbed down loose rocks with her lifeless body on his back. They were standing at the opening of the cave, it was pouring rain outside. A bit further in the cave, they saw light flickering in the darkness.

Lopt signed her to follow him. As they walked closer towards the light, which appeared to be a campfire, she saw herself lying next to it. Her other-self woke up and started looking around. Of course, this past-version of her couldn’t see her actual self and Lopt standing there. The other Yaël looked terrified as she discovered she was completely alone in a dark and deep cave.

“Lopt?” she whispered, clearly afraid to make too much sound. Yaël remembered thinking she never escaped from being buried alive, as she saw the scene from her memory in front of her. It took her a few months after that to stop thinking she was under the ground, every time she woke up in complete darkness. The sound of footsteps was coming from the direction of the opening of the cave.

“It’s still the cave,” memory-Lopt answered as he walked in, completely soaked, carrying a big pile of branches.

“Yeah…sorry,” she didn’t want to be a burden.

“That’s okay,” Lopt sounded soothing as he spread the branches, so they’d dry more quickly. The real Yaël looked up to check on the Lopt standing next to her. He looked at the scene very mindfully, like he was catching all the details and thought about them.

“Oh, you’re drained!” the memory-Yaël jumped up as soon as she noticed that. “Aren’t you cold?” she said as she walked towards him.

“I’m always cold,” he answered with some sort of half smile, like he was a bit sad about it. Yaël, who didn’t really get what he meant by that, reached up and put her hand against his forehead.  A gesture he clearly hadn’t seen coming. He stared at her for a second, looking completely startled. Then a frown appeared on his face.

“Wow, you’re very cold…” Yaël said as she pulled her hand back.

“No,” he answered and he grabbed her hand, still frowning. “You have a fever. I’m not that cold as you think I am, normally I’m just a bit more chilly than other people.”

“Huh?” was Yaël’s super-intelligent answer.

“I’m… a Frost Giant, I’m supposed to be colder than you.”

“Oh, but you don’t look different, I mean, it’s not like you look colder or anything.” Yaël didn’t even know what a Frost Giant was supposed to look like. Lopt doubted for a second before looking away. Within a small moment, his skin started turning blue, his eyes red. Memory- and regular-Yaël’s eyes both started growing bigger. Within the fraction of a second, there was a blue man standing in front of her. Memory-Yaël noticed that Lopt avoided looking at her. And as she gasped out of wonder, he immediately turned normal again.

“It’s anomalous, I know,” he told her.

“I think it’s amazing,” she answered with a smile.

“You,” he said while pointing at her, “have a fever. I should’ve gone stealing more blankets to keep you warm.”

“Lopt, it’s pretty damn hot in here.” Yaël looked at her other self and saw a drip of sweat roll over her chalk-white cheek. She looked miserable!

“This bloody cave…” Lopt grumbled at himself. Memory-Yaël’s eyes fell shut while she was standing. She was fighting against it, but her energy was long gone. The flames felt way too hot, like she was standing in the fire. Lopt was still fiddling with the branches when Yaël told him she was going back to sleep. He looked up and raised an eyebrow when she started to step away from the fire.

“Come here,” he gestured with his hand. Yaël shook her head.

“It’s way too hot there.”

“Yes, that’s the intention, as I don’t want you to die from a fever.”

“You have a fever!”

“You don’t know what you’re saying anymore. Now, come here!” he demanded, but Yaël had never been that good at following orders. So she stubbornly sat down where she had been standing, which made Lopt frown even more. He sighed sarcastically as he walked towards her, plucked her from the ground, ignored her protest sprawling, which caused him to curse loudly after she kicked his nose, and put her back down next to the fire, at the exact point he had told her to go sit a few seconds ago.

“I’m not a dog!” she yelled at him angrily.

“I just saved you from death two days ago and now you don’t even want to listen to me when I tell you that you have a fever! If you want to get even more sick by accidentally cooling yourself off too much, then you should do that when I’m not around!” he barked at her.

She stared at him for a little moment, before pulling out her corset and dress, so she was only sitting in a thin shirt and an underskirt. The real Yaël cocked an eyebrow as she suddenly remembered very vividly that no man was supposed to see her like that on Helvegen. It was kind of funny to see her that former-self wasn’t a prude either, she had never been ashamed of her body. Not that Lopt could see much, but on a planet like Helvegen, this was already very naked.

Lopt just threw his hands in the air and grunted. He picked up a few dry branches and threw them in the fire. After grumpily poking around in the flames a bit, he seemed to cool off. He got back up and picked up a blanket. Yaël was pretty sure he wasn’t going to talk to her anymore and was just going to sleep. But he didn’t, instead he came to her, carefully spread the blanket over her, which made her just roll her eyes as she was thinking it was becoming his mission to let her boil up. Yaël refused to look up or thank him.

Suddenly two cold hands grabbed her waist and pulled her back a bit, so she leaned against him. The difference between his cold skin and her feverish one was very noticeable. As she looked behind her, she noticed he had pulled off his own shirt. Suddenly, the cave didn’t feel like an oven anymore. It felt just fine.

Yaël was fighting against falling asleep, but she unwittingly leaned more into Lopt’s embrace. He rested his chin on her shoulder and closed his eyes himself.

“Uh, what’s happening?” real Yaël asked the other Lopt who was still standing next to her.

“Well, this was surely the start of something…” he answered, not finishing his sentence as he scratched his head, like he was hesitant to say it.

“What?!” Yaël felt the rhythm of her heartbeat change due to the panic that was streaming in. He stayed very calm under watching her walk around panicky.

“Look, we both don’t really like the term ‘ _relationship_ ’,” he carefully tried to explain her, his eyes were still following her movements. In front of them, memory-Yaël and –Lopt had both fallen asleep in the embrace.

“Please stop talking,” she mumbled with a shaky voice, trying to blur out what he was about to tell her.

She tried to squeeze her eyes shut, in the hope she should just wake up before discovering this was actually true, before remembering the memories.

Yaël should never be in a relationship, this wasn’t how it worked, this wasn’t how she worked. She couldn’t be bound to this person, could she? It felt like something was wrapped around her throat, but Yaël knew it was purely panic. The only thing she could give this person was disappointment.

Two hands cupped her face, thumbs softly caress her cheeks. She remembered those hands for every time she started stressing out over whatever the heck it was them two had. She remembered what it felt like to feel his chilly hugs, the fierce fights, but always crawling back to each other. They had never been what people would call a ‘ _couple_ ’ but they had been together, in a way.

 “Loki?” Oh, she remembered, after the scene they both just saw, after they had woken up, Loki had told her his real name. Yaël finally opened her eyes and saw Loki’s sad smile.

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

But still, Yaël kept freaking out. Like she had done many times towards him. A loud shriek next to her, didn’t really help. It made her jump and look to her right, pulling herself from Loki’s touch, ready to attack.

Two way too familiar brown eyes stared at her anxiously.

“Peter?!” What the hell was going on? Why was Parker lying next to her? When did she lay herself down? She turned to look back at Loki, but she only saw the wall of her bedroom. It started to kick in. She went to the party last night… and… she looked back at Peter. This couldn’t be happening right now. Yaël just found out she had been in some sort of relationship, or was she still in it? Were they still ‘together’ or something?

Shit! And now she woke up, next to a FREAKING TEENAGER. She should keep her shit together, he’d think she is unstable if she’d show him how she was feeling at that moment.

“Uh, you have any idea what I’m doing here?” Peter asked her. Yaël saw the reflection of her own hysterical feelings projected on her friend’s face. Okay, he was panicking too, he shouldn’t do that, it kind of made a tear in her heart. Peter shouldn’t feel like shit, she should ease him somehow, and revealing to him she was freaking out herself wasn’t the best way to do that.

Was there a way to act light-headedly?

“I remember getting your text…” Goddammit, what came after that? “I was heading your way to rip you a new one, but I don’t remember the details; I was kinda drunk,” she mumbled. Oh, wait, she also remembered him dancing to Umbrella.

“Oh God,” Peter groaned. At that moment, Yaël suddenly realized she was completely naked. She sneakily looked aside and saw Peter neurotically covering his body with the blanket.

“Oh crap, did we- you know?” the words spilled out before Yaël could even think about them. Peter didn’t answer. No… no, this wasn’t right! Normally, she wouldn’t care that much, but she wasn’t in the right state to go over this easily. She had just heard that somewhere across the universe, someone thought she was a part of him.

Which she was.

Fuck, it was even worse to know it was true!

Yaël saw something thrown down on the floor. As she climbed out of bed to reach for it, she immediately recognized what it was.

“You know, at least we used protection,” she said, while aiming the condom to the bin, just to act all natural about it. She surely hoped she didn’t take the kid’s virginity. “I even had a speech ready for when I scolded you, but I can’t remember if I did that already…” Yaël tried to distract herself from her bigger problems, but she knew Peter and she had to talk out some shit. Their friendship hadn’t been smooth, well it had been barely existing passed few weeks.

Why had she been so angry with him last night? Oh right, she was drunk and…she had just discovered the whole city thought of her as a villain. Well, probably being linked to the God of Mischief didn’t help that reputation either. Steve was right, it had been hard for her to know which side she was on when she first arrived on earth, because she had been sleeping around with the bloody uber-villain himself, she was a master-weapon and she was a lonely creature at that point. Suddenly she remembered how she ended up in the Chitauri attack.

A sting shot through her hand, distracting her from that memory. Yaël blinked a few times. Great, she had scratched her hand open again. As she put the wound against her lips, she noticed Peter hiding his face in the palms of his hands. She saw his shoulders shock softly. Right, she had to ease him, and she was failing at it miserably.

“Uh, Peter, are you alright?”

Of course he wasn’t, dumb twat, Yaël thought to herself. What could she do? She felt miserable herself. Being afraid to break down if she’d pull him into her arms, she simple patted his arm. Of course that didn’t help. Talking their shit out wasn’t going to happen that day, but Yaël couldn’t care less. Surely, she wanted her friend to know she loved him, and to tell him all the thing she might’ve said on that party didn’t matter anymore. She wanted to tell him she had been childish…but she couldn’t. Yaël knew none of these words, which would all come from her heart, would comfort this boy at this point.

Yaël felt the lump in her throat growing bigger. “Alright, this isn’t working. I’m calling your aunt,” she said, trying to hide the fact that she needed to leave him before she’d collapse right in front of him. Peter grabbed her arm. “No, she had a night shift and she’s probably sleeping,” he muttered out, trying to breathe between his sobs.

“Alright, but I am calling _somebody_ ,” she said. Peter didn’t stop her when she grabbed his phone. Yaël walked out the bedroom, giving the teen some privacy to put on some clothes. It wasn’t so that Yaël cared about the sex-stuff. She wasn’t ashamed of that. It was the total package that made her feel horrible. This was her friend, and she used him, because somehow when she gets drunk, she can’t stay away from men.

Well, that had never been a problem before last night… But she didn’t know how Loki would react if he knew this. Knowing him, he’d act like it was nothing, like it was her life, because she knew she wasn’t the only one he had slept with while caring for each other. But unlike Yaël, Loki was secretly jealous, though he always tried to hide it. So God knows how he would react, she hadn’t seen him in ages…

Yaël knew exactly who she had to call.

“ _Peter?_ ”

“Stark,” Yaël answered dryly.

“ _Yaël?! Why the hell do you have Peter’s phone?_ ” He probably thought she’d stolen it to stalk him about the job to water the flowers in the tower.

“Because you have to come to pick him up?”

“ _What happened?”_

“We went to this party and the next day we woke up and he just sort of collapsed…” It was getting harder to sound stable.

“ _You two…_ -“ Of course Stark immediately assumed what happened, and he was probably going to point his finger at her for making his son feel so bad.

“Ahum…Y-yeah,” she stammered.

“ _Text me your address, I’ll be there in a few minutes_ ,” he answered sternly. Yup, Yaël could feel the blame already.

Yaël walked back into her bedroom, figuring Peter would be wearing clothes by now. But she just walked into her friend staring at the shirt he was holding in his hands, like he was too confused to understand how and why he should put it on. A bell rang in Yaël’s head: maybe the boy had been taking his pills and mixed those with booze… Which made him react like this. Another bell rang: she had forgotten to take her sleeping-pills last night…

Yaël helped him to get dressed, guided him to her sofa and served him a hot coco. Leaning with her elbow on the table behind Peter, she stared at him, but he didn’t notice. She kept an eye on him because she was afraid he’d shatter in a million little pieces in front of her, she was afraid his mental health would be completely beaten down after all of this, but most of all, she was afraid to think about herself.

After half an hour, Stark stormed into the building without bothering to ring the doorbell or knocking on the door. No, he just smashed the door open and ran towards his son, wrapping his arms around Peter as soon as Stark reached him. The son dug himself more into his father’s embrace and Yaël felt the lump only growing bigger. She shouldn’t be watching this, it was a private moment, so she walked to her bedroom, closing the door behind her, waiting for the sound of the front door getting pulled shut.

After that, she carefully opened the door and walked out of her bedroom. A shriek left her mouth as out of nowhere somebody wrapped his arms around her and forced her to face him. It was Charles, of course it was Charles. Well, his younger and illusive version. But he felt real enough, as Charles was a damn pro in casting illusions.

He looked at her severely, but as soon as he saw the tears running down her cheeks, his face softened. He put one hand behind her head and made her lean into him, while the other one was still sturdily supporting her back.

“Don’t you ever dare to do that again…” he said softly.  She had no answers, she could only clench onto him as she felt like she was breaking down. “I was afraid you were going back into…the disease you had last time.”

Yaël only shook her head to reply.

“Did you forget to take your sleeping-medication?” she nodded. He stroke the back of her head with his thumb. “I informed Mr. Rogers, he’ll come here the moment the aircraft comes down.”

Yaël should tell Charles one day that his voice was extremely soothing, as her words were stuck at that moment. Surely the telepath didn’t need to hear her say it as he could hear her think it. So he smiled the most warm smile he had as he started telling her random stories about adventures he once had, about a certain species of flowers, about a book he had read…

Until someone knocked on the door. Charles tenderly wiped away her tears and waited for her to turn around before he disappeared. But as soon as she opened the door, Steve picked her up from the floor after which she immediately started screaming into his shoulder. All the pain she felt streamed out while the man held her firmly, so she knew he wouldn’t let go until she was ready.

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

“Are we still, eh, a thing?” Yaël was talking about Loki to Steve.

“Nobody knows, actually,” Steve sounded doubtful. “You haven’t seen each other since the Chitauri attack. Thor took him back to Asgard.”

“Oh.” The attack…Memories started pouring back into her brain since her dream last night.

After a while of living in the cave, some sort of spaceship had descended from the sky and it had stopped right above the lake, like it was waiting for Loki and Yaël to come out. Yaël, who back then didn’t know yet that the name Loki only meant trouble.

Getting on the ship was the worst mistake Yaël had ever made, but on the other side, if she had stayed on Helvegen, it would have been the death of her as the whole kingdom was trying to hunt her down. Some nights, she had heard footsteps and whispering, but the guards had never managed to find her in that cave. Once they’d got into the ship, Loki turned two-faced. Yaël had much trouble adjusting to its technology, but that was nothing compared to how she got treated and how she had to adjust towards Loki.

They locked her up in a very white bedroom, with no windows, no colors, nothing…only a chair and a bed. Loki never did a thing to give her more freedom and after a while, Yaël understood that she had just been a prisoner. Sometimes, when the guards guided her through the metal, shiny alleys, to some sort of ‘trainingroom’, she could see Loki talking to a screen with a big purple mannish creature on it, which she heard Loki called Thanos.

The ‘trainingroom’ had been a complete hell. The Chitauri had pushed her to use her powers and as soon as they noticed she didn’t know how these worked yet, they started pushing her buttons even more. First, they tried physical pain, knocking and kicking her until they had to bring her back to her room because she didn’t move anymore. After that, they tried mental torture. The Chitauri reconstructed Raido and Cem’s death somehow, she surely didn’t get how the technology worked, and made her watch it over and over again. But the more they tried getting to her, the more she started pushing back. With every hit they gave her, she escaped from the grip and stumped someone right in the face. Every time she saw the screens turn on, she closed her eyes and started singing loudly. Sometimes Loki walked in and watched it for a second, calmly, with his hands against his back, just to walk out again.

Sometimes he came to visit her in her room afterwards. Those were the moments he had been caring for her, cleaning her wounds. After a while, Yaël refused to talk to him anymore. He was the reason why she ended up on that ship. But Loki never stopped talking to her, even though he knew she wouldn’t reply, he told her it was almost over, that she shouldn’t be afraid. But the joke was that on one point, she couldn’t feel afraid as she wasn’t able to feel a thing anymore. Just the way Thanos wanted her to be.

Their last step was ‘technological modification’ and it was the actual first time she heard Loki stand up for her. She heard his yelling resonate through the hallway, right before a few of the Chitauri walked in to come and get her. They grabbed her firmly and dragged her to the hallway, as she kicked around, trying to get loose, because she was smart enough to know that if Loki was trying to prevent this from happening to her, it must be horrible as he never held the Chitauri back from doing anything to her. In the hallways, she had seen bodies lying on the floor, dead, glassy eyes staring at the ceiling and before Yaël could register what was going on, she saw Loki leisurely stepping over the men he had killed. The spouts of blood running over his hands and the knives he was holding, made a big contrast with the serene, but determined look on his face.

He kind of looked like an animal, gracefully focusing on his prey. And for a moment, Yaël had really thought she’d be saved.

But what he hadn’t been counting on, was the sudden release of some sort of gas through the sprinklers on the ceiling. Of course, the Chitauri had been warned, because they all put on gasmasks.

“Did you forget who you’re dealing with?” Thanos’s annoyed voice rumbled through the speakers. The last thing Yaël had seen, was Loki growling as a few men grabbed his arms and started pulling him backwards as his legs refused to work.

When she woke up, she didn’t wake up. They had put some sort of on and off switch in her skull, linked to the part of her brain that steered her powers. And that’s exactly how she ended up in the Chitauri attack, as a puppet, a pet, a weapon as thoughtless as a gun. Somewhere after that, SHIELD captured her and put her in the cage as they tried to get that thing out of her skull.

Yaël couldn’t make up her mind about Loki, though. She believed he tricked her in all of this. He used her trust to make her his weapon as he tried to take over Earth, but yet, he also tried to stop that somehow. Maybe she was just dumb and naïve, because it was actually very clear she didn’t mean that much to him, right?

He needed the stone, he found out she was carrying it, so he made her believe her gave a crap about her just so she’d follow him. And the reason why he started fighting as they were going to put the switch in her head, was probably because he didn’t want to take the risk that her powers would be weakened by it, or something like that.

Which clearly didn’t happen.

 _“-but they’re all very powerful and there are people…creatures looking for them with no good intentions, to use them as weapon.”_ Yaël remembered Charles telling her, that day when they were sitting in the graveyard, just talking. He meant it as something that could happen in the future, not as something that had already happened.

All of this, the stuff with Loki, immediately reminded her to those kids in the woods, back on Helvegen. That one boy seemed to ‘like’ her too, but it was all fun and games. She had just been a joke to them. And later it happened again, with Loki. That had to be the last time, never again, she swore to herself.

When Yaël woke up again later in the day, Steve was gone. He probably went back to Stark, as he immediately came to her after his mission without passing by at Tony’s.

 

* * *

 

 

Yaël tried to focus on the details of her own movements as she was walking. Like the way her feet touched the ground or the way her arms moved during it. She intended to make the two ‘people’ she created out of water and fire work as smoothly as possible. As she scratched her chin while she was thinking about how she’d manage to make them as fluent as a living and breathing person.

Yaël waved and both of her creations waved back at her.

“Okay, good,” she mumbled to herself obviously, as the persons in front of her were her own spawns. “Let’s see how you guys move if I try to focus less on you, push you more into my subconsciousness. Yaël closed her eyes and took a few steps backwards, away from her creations. She hoped her plan would work out. Fire and water are her strongest powers, which she can steer without focusing on it. Now she was going to try to do the same, but whilst her powers are formed into humanoid figures. Would she be able to do different things, apart from the movements her creations would make?

Yaël heard a noise and was able to duck away as soon as she opened them and saw the products storming towards her. She dodged burning fists and watery feet swinging her way. It was working! These two powers were controlled well enough to handle them from her subconsciousness, while she was doing something else consciously. In this case, her spawns were able to attack her while she was able to dodge them. Of course they weren’t able to hit her even once, because Yaël was still steering them, just less actively.

Somewhere next to her, a door opened. Yaël didn’t look up, she kept on attacking and defending herself on the same time, which felt kind of weird and extremely exhausting, but she was curious to see how far she’d be able to push this.

“Yaël, it’s dinnertime. You already skipped lunch this noon, so I advise you to take a break and come eat something.” Yaël finally turned her head to answer Scott when she felt a foot, hooking behind her leg. She tumbled down and fell roughly on her back. Dang it, that hurt… After blinking a few times, she made herself sit up and pointed at the water-thing in front of her.

“You bastard! I was distracted!” Wasn’t she yelling at herself now, since she was still kind of steering them? The figure tilted its head like a confused dog. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, dweeb,” she grumbled when the water-spawn put its hands in the air, acting a bit dumb.

The fire-one offered her its hand to help her get back onto her feet, but Yaël waved it away and got up herself, as the fire would’ve burnt her hand if she’d grab it. “Look, that one at least has some manners,” Yaël said while brushing some dust off her pants. The water-one threw its arms in the air, then it put one of its hands on its, uh, hip and with the other hand, it moved its fingers in such a way that it looked like a mouth that quickly opened and closed. It was telling her she was talking too much. “Wait a minute, you sassy twat, you-“

Scott scraped his throat to get her attention.

“What?” she barked at him.

“You’re kind of talking to yourself, as these things just take over your micro-expressions and the underlying emotions you’re unaware of,” Scott pointed out “You’ve been doing this kind of laborious exercises for days, maybe even weeks already.”

“I’ve been taking breaks!” Yaël threw back.

“Yes,” Scott sighed. “You stop to teach your classes, eat an apple, drink some water and then you always immediately come back to the gymnasium to train some more.” The fact that he was right, was annoying her.

“Okay, you know what? I’ll be there in ten,” she said as she waved with her hand to shoo him away.

As Scott finally left the room, she started thinking. She should be able to make these kind of creatures with air and earth too. Well, Yaël knew she wasn’t able to, yet, but she should be as those two elements were a part of her powers too.

“Okay, you two: leave. I need to focus.” The fire went back to the bunch of candles Yaël had lit for her training and the water simply streamed back into a bucket Yaël had filled, until the two ‘persons’ were completely gone. Using candles and buckets of water made sure that Yaël wasn’t obliged to dehydrate or push herself into a hypothermic attack. But yet, training to push herself as far as she could by making the elements come from her own body, was written on her bucket list too.

It took Yaël a complete hour to make a being from the stones she had gathered. A single drip of sweat rolled from her forehead. With her hands in her side, she looked at her creation, which was rigidly copying her movements. It didn’t move smoothly enough, she would never be able to steer it from her subconsciousness this way, let alone use it fluently. A sigh escaped from her lips, her back hurt, her heart raced like a furious hummingbird and her stomach ached in a very unpleasant way.

“Okay, now air…” she mumbled to herself as she rubbed her eyes.

Yaël slid one of her feet backwards and focused on her breathing as the respiration made it easier to ‘catch up’ the air. She tried steering it in such a way she could create another person, but instead she accidentally blasted a stream of air against her stone creation, which of course immediately blew into a million pieces. Her miserable, frustrated cry echoed through the gymnasium. Now she had to rebuild the whole damn thing!

And so she did. Yaël scratched her chest during the process, as her heart was still pounding way to fast, making her feel anxious and nauseous. Completely out of breath, she instantly started working on her air-product. It didn’t work out that well, though. Yaël kept pumping, kept forcing her body to do something so exhaustive whilst ignoring the signals it was trying to make.

At one point while she tried steering the four elements at the same time in such an amount that she was trying to make 4 persons out of her powers at the same time, her powers came back to her.

Now, Yaël was capable of using the elements at the same time, but her mind and body were broken, badly nourished, not maintained. So her own steering came back to her, not in a peaceful way, but more in an implosion kind of way. Her body sucked everything back up, the powers came running back to their owner like she was some sort of magnet, way quicker than Yaël had ever been able to steer the powers. Within only a split-second, she saw her creations dissolve. It felt like there was a big ball of energy forming in her body, way too big to even fit there. This wasn’t going well, Yaël realized, but she didn’t have the time to act against it.

Within a blink of an eye, she didn’t even have the time to turn towards the door to yell for help, the ‘ball’ started bursting. Or was it her bones that were breaking?

Everything went black for a few seconds.

“Peter, honey, wake up,” Yaël heard someone sob. The question echoed in the dark. Suddenly, Yaël started seeing a few shims, that colored clearer and clearer the longer she looked at it, like it was some sort of Polaroid-picture.

It’s a man, holding onto a young boy’s lifeless body.

“C’mon baby boy, open those eyes, huh? Give me something.” It took Yaël a moment to realize it was Tony Stark, rocking Peter’s body. The father’s tears dripped on the son’s pale cheeks as Stark caressed through the boy’s hair.

How did he die? Yaël tried to ask, but there was no sound coming from her mouth. All she could do was helplessly stare at her dead friend. Another one that she failed to keep safe. But how did she fail him? How could she? Yaël hadn’t even known he had been in danger! She should’ve been there for him, with him, wherever he had been or still was. Her steps didn’t take her closer to her fallen friend, her brother. Instead, she could only watch and listen how a dad gets torn apart after seeing his son die.

“Damn it Peter, stay with me, you hear me?! Don’t you dare leave me! Just stay with me!” Tony grunted. After a little while, he let Peter’s head rest on his shoulder while supporting it, trying to keep his son close while letting out more sobs as he begs his son to come back.

Like that wasn’t bad enough, Steve joined the scenery. He let his shield drop, looking like he had been or still was is some heavy combat.

“Oh, no,” he muttered. He walked towards his family and wrapped his arms around them. Yaël saw him making Tony lean into his arms. A tear made a way through the dirt on Cap’s cheek. He closed his eyes, like he was testing if this was just a bad dream. But apparently, it wasn’t.

Suddenly, Yaël’s surroundings changed. Tony, Peter and Steve turned to shades and then disappear to make place for a new shade. Again, after looking at it for a few seconds it became clear: it was Peter falling. Now, Yaël really, really wished she could look away, but she had to be cursed, because the only thing she could look at, was how Peter knocked against the ground in a murdering tempo.

Like that wasn’t bad enough yet, the scenario got repeated. Peter appeared up high and started tumbling down again…and again, and again. She was frozen in place. Every scream, sob, tear she wanted to let out, seemed to be nonexistent. Like this chimera, caused by the implosion of her powers, took away her right to show her feelings. It was a never-ending torture. Yaël saw another shade appear next to Peter and she had a terrible feeling about it.

There he was, Raido, with Nilla behind him, holding the blade against his throat just a split-second before slitting his throat. His lifeless body slammed against the tiles. And also that got replayed and replayed right in front of her. If she’d be able to break her neck, just to look away, Yaël would do it. Her two friends kept on dying and got joined by a shade that turned into her father breathing out his last, shaky breath before falling down in the grass.

She wanted to scream to cut it out. Her heart pounded in her chest, this whole situation was fucking her up!

But wait, maybe there was a message… Why else would she go through this?

What made her get stuck into this shithole? Her powers got slammed back into her…but why? Because she overdrove them or because she mistreated her own body? Probably the second one, since she’s known for overusing her powers. Okay, but why didn’t she just faint?

“You can’t die, Sugarpie…” Yaël heard Wade’s voice echo in the nothingness. Oh, so she was getting hints now? What was this, some twisted game of cluedo? ‘Watch your friends and family die as you try to find the answer’, the new, sensational game! Okay, sure, Wade had claimed that Yaël was immortal, but there was no proof for that. Well, okay, she survived a Hulk-smash somehow, which seemed to be a big deal.

“Because that thing inside you, it’s something we have to be careful with. Every infinity stone is different, but they’re all very powerful.” Charles echoing voice seemed to be the next hint.

Wait a minute, was it the stone that was trying to tell her something? Like, what, try harder not to die or you’ll end up like them? Or try not to mistreat your own body or you’ll never be able to save someone you love again?

With a shock, Yaël woke up in the gymnasium again, breathing sharply. “Holy fuck!” she growled as she took a minute to calm down. Okay, she got the message, she needed to eat something as soon as possible. But why did the Stone show her Peter? He wasn’t dead, Raido and Cem were. Did the thing show her some kind of future? It surely looked like Stark, Peter and Steve had been fighting in some kind of war. Just to be sure, Yaël quickly took her phone and checked on the internet if there was a war going on somewhere near.

Nope…

Yaël jumped up, which was a bad idea since the quick movement combined with the lack of food made her feel dizzy. She knew what she had to do.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't have the chance to post last week, so I'll be posting two chapters this week instead :)

The door was already open. Of course it was, Peter’s aunt had let Yaël in via the intercom so she knew who was going to walk through the door.  The handle was wet and Yaël immediately noticed why: miss May was doing the dishes.

“Hi!” she yelled above the clattering the plates in the water made.

“Yo, miss Peter’s aunt,” Yaël answered happily, May’s enthusiasm was contagious. “Is Peter home?” May took a towel and quickly dried her hands before throwing it on the kitchen counter.

“Yeah, he’s in his room,” she said as she jumped to the coat rack and put on her jacket “I’m glad you’re here!” May let out hastily as she, confused by her rush, kissed Yaël on her cheek. Then she mumbled “Be good!” before she smacked the door shut.

“Wait, what do you mean by-“ Yaël tried to ask about Peter, but May was off to work already.

Feeling a bit perplexed, Yaël walked to Peter’s bedroom door and knocked on it.

“Yeah?” Peter answered from behind it. Okay, that was the cue to walk in.

“Oh, uh, hi!” There he was, alive, but not really kicking. His eyes were red and his cheeks wet. He had clearly been crying. Yaël’s brain glitched a bit from receiving two mixed messages: 1) Peter isn’t falling down for eternity, 2) He was clearly unhappy. So all Yaël could think of to answer his awkward greet was: “You’ve been crying…”

“No, I haven’t!” he tried to counter while putting his hands on his hips to make try to himself seem more serious about it. Well, it looked more like he tried to convince himself he hadn’t been crying.

“Okay, what happened?”Yaël made clear that she wasn’t buying his crappy lie.

“No-nothing, really,” he muttered“It’s just… I wouldn’t have expected you here? Aren’t you, like, extremely mad at me or something?” His puppy-eyes met hers. She couldn’t be mad at him, not after what had happened the night before. Not ever again. Yaël crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, carefully as she was trying not to damage one of his posters.

“And why would you think that I am?”

When Peter told her someone had been filming their fight on the party, Yaël snorted. She chuckled, not to laugh with him, but because him worrying that she was still mad about that idiotic mistake, warmed her heart. Of course it was she who caused all that drama, but his reaction showed he really cared about her.

“Give it to me,” she said, while signing with her hand after he told her he saved the fragment on his phone, but hadn’t dared to watch it yet. She sat down onto the bed, next to him and held the phone in front of them so Peter could see the screen too. “Then we’ll do it together; I don’t remember much of it, either,”

First thing that came up was Peter, dancing in ridiculous clothes to Rihanna’s Umbrella. Yaël remembered bits and pieces of that moment, but it was surely hilarious as hell to watch it again. Peter’s faced turned red, of course it did. And because of that Yaël couldn’t ignore the chance to make a sarcastic note about his appearances on the tape.

Then the two of them, in the fragment, suddenly noticed each other and somehow their first, immediate reaction was starting to yell at one another without any context or indication of a fight. 

“- _been there for you, and I helped you with your crap about your DAMN FATHER! And then all of the sudden NOTHING! Couldn’t even leave a simple text to me or Wade, couldn’t you?!”_ Yaël turned the volume a bit down as the noise of her own yelling cut through her ears.

_“I just forgot, okay? I’ve been busy with the internship!”_

_“Oh, BUSY WITH THE INTERNSHIP HUH? THE ONE YOU GOT BECAUSE I TOLD YOU TO DO IT?!”_ Uh…she glanced at Peter, but his eyes were glued to the screen, so she looked back at it.

 _“I don’t really see what you’re getting on about?! It’s not like I haven’t asked you a few times to hang around, you know?!”_ The kid was so right… she had been a complete twat. Though, she still didn’t feel like ‘hanging around’ the way he meant to: the superhero-kind- of-way.

“ _Oh my god, is that Parker? And who’s that girl? His girlfriend? – I don’t know. She looks way out of his league!”_

What? Some random girl just called Yaël out of Peter’s league?! They were clearly drunk too. Damn, and they didn’t even know what happened after that party…

 “ _YOU KNOW WHY I DIDN’T HANG AROUND! I’M NOT LIKE YOU, I’M NOT… GOOD!”_

_“YOU COULD BE IF YOU AT LEAST TRIED A LITTLE BIT! WHAT DO YOU DO ALL THE TIME; JUST SIT AROUND AT HOME WATCHING YOUR TV SHOWS? DO YOU EVER JUST TRY TO CONTROL IT? PRACTICE?!”_

Hey, she has been trying!

 _“IF YOU WOULD HAVE EVEN CARED A LITTLE BIT, YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT I’VE BEEN TRYING!”_ Yeah, take that, digital, wasted Peter!

 _“CLEARLY NOT ENOUGH, SINCE I DON’T SEE YOU IN THE STREETS HELPING KITTENS OUT OF TREES!”_ the Peter on screen rants drunkenly.

“ _HAD YOU NOT BEEN SO BUSY WITH YOUR DAMN FATHER YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN WHY! I TOLD YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT WHERE I CAME FROM. DO YOU THINK THAT HAS BEEN EASY ON ME?”_ Yaël felt ashamed for throwing all her insecurities on the table. Her problems seemed so dumb and childish when she heard the drunk-Yaël yell about them. She leaned with her chin onto her hands, cupping her cheeks to hide away her redness.

“ _WELL, MAYBE YOU SHOULD’VE TOLD ME HOW YOU FELT ABOUT THAT! I’M NOT A PSYCHIC!_ ”

“ _YOU’RE ACTING LIKE A BITCH, PARKER! BITCHER PARKER! YOU KNOW WHAT I’VE BEEN THROUGH, DO YOU THINK, FOR ONE SECOND, THAT ME NOT BEING A WUSS ABOUT IT, MEANS THAT I’M ALRIGHT WITH EVERYTHING?!”_

“ _YOU DON’T CALL ME BITCHER PARKER!_ ”

“ _I JUST D-DID_!” she yelled, then she tried pointing at him, which seemed to be a tough exercise.“ _YOU JUST DON’T CARE ABOUT ME AS MUCH AS I CARE ABOUT YOU!_ ” The real Yaël hid her face even more. They somehow managed to sound more and more wasted and childish every second, slurring their words and articulating like a toddles. 

“ _THAT’S NOT TRUE”_ the Peter on the screen burped and then went on with: _“ I LOVE YOU!_ ” Yikes! Yaël surely hoped that that was pure drunken blabbering and not real feelings coming out of a deep drawer in Peter’s heart.

Suddenly someone in the crowd shouted: “JUST KISS ALREADY!” And for some unknown reason, Yaël and Peter crashed into each other’s arms and started kissing sensationally. Well, this was the phenomenon that Yaël knew as ‘the heat of the moment’. Peter squeaked and ripped the phone out of Yaël’s hands.

“Well, I figure both of us pretty much got it off our chests back then. You got anything more to add to it?” Peter asked while unwittingly ticking his legs, using them as drums.

“Not really. I’m tired of being angry, you know. I just- it’s not like I’ve got many friends to begin with. It would be stupid of me to push the ones I have away to begin with.” It didn’t matter anymore that she didn’t see or hear Peter that much. What mattered was that she was there for him, and he would be there for her too, she was sure of that now. And even if he wasn’t, even if his busy mind lost her for a moment, that would be no shame, because he’d never mean it in a bad way, he’s just a bit occupied and blurry-minded like that. Yaël couldn’t help but smile out of the affection she felt for this guy. Well, she also smiled her own stupidity for ever being angry at him away.

“Let’s just agree to be better friends to each other, huh?” she said to him. Peter nodded, and they even shook hands to that.

But there was something else Yaël wanted answers to. “Though I feel like we still need to talk about what happened afterwards…”

“Oh no,” Peter groaned, his cheeks turned red once again. He had clearly been trying to avoid that subject, but unlucky for him, Yaël wasn’t quickly ashamed of these kinds of conversations and she felt like she just had to clear this ‘unspoken’ thing out, or they’d both be thinking and asking themselves questions about it for the rest of their life.

“I know, it sucks, but if there are some… unspoken feelings… we may need to just, you know, put it out there,” Yaël said carefully, hoping the kid wouldn’t spill out his romantic emotions.

Peter jumped up to defend himself energetically. “I swear, I don’t have hidden feelings for you. I mean, sure, you look great and all; very exotic with that Latino vibe and then the hair. But to be honest, and I don’t mean to be rude, the combination of my meds and the alcohol…” Yaël took the compliment easily and let it pass.

Her friend was exaggerating her looks a bit, but he meant well. Of course, she wasn’t ugly, her self-esteem wasn’t that low, besides, she was used to the attention of men. Well, mostly drunk men, but sometimes it annoyed her too. Like people weren’t always able to look passed her body and figure out her mind. She wasn’t an ‘easy’ woman, she had a lot of emotions with which she didn’t always knew how to act on them correctly. Though, she knew that most of the time, in the clothes she was wearing usually and the effort she didn’t put in her make-up at all, she looked like a hobo and she didn’t mind that at all.

Of course she was able to make herself look pretty, and she liked doing it too, but that never felt like a priority. That, and the few times she did her best to look pretty, she ends up drunk in bed with a random dude, or her best friend apparently.

Next to the compliments, she understood the med-thing. She had forgotten her sleeping-pills that night too and that had given her even more complications than just waking up next to her friend. Not that she was minimalizing his reaction, though.  His pills-flaw just gave him a totally different error than hers, though they both ended very emotional after that situation.

“Let me guess, it made you horny as fuck?” Yaël blurted out, getting back to the conversation. Of course Prude Parker started blushing again as he threw himself on his back and put his hands in front of his eyes, making the bed shake with his movement. So… Okay, maybe she should clear her emotions out too. “Don’t worry, I don’t have a secret crush on you, Peter. My libido’s just… extremely high, I suppose.” Well, especially when she was intoxicated.

“You one of those one-night-stand-girls, then? No strings attached?” Peter said as he pulled away one of his hands and put it behind his head, so he could look at her.

“Eh, pretty much,” for a second she hesitated if she really wanted the stamp saying ‘one-night-sting-girl’ on her forehead. But it was Peter, and she didn’t want to be ashamed of herself.“There was somebody, but he only just left again, though I don’t know where,” she lowered her back and made herself comfortable by laying on Peter’s legs. He didn’t really react to that, like it was all natural, well, which made it all natural, of course.

Yaël was glad that she didn’t scare Peter by touching him after the traumatizing morning she had given him. “He was a cool dude. Didn’t speak much, either,” she added. Yaël was talking about Bucky. It had been a long time she had talked about it, as Steve rather ignored the fact that it had happened and she hadn’t really told anyone else. Well, she didn’t remember anyone else, so who knows what she had told to who.

“Whoa, how did you stumble upon him?” Peter’s eyes twinkled curiously.

“A bar; he needed distraction, I needed distraction. It was a win-win, I suppose.” For a moment, it was quiet, but not in an awkward way. The silence made Yaël slip away in her own thoughts. She had never been in a relationship after Loki, she wasn’t that dumb and naïve, but Bucky hadn’t been just a one-night-stand either, like she had made Steve believe.

It had been somewhere in between, well, kind of like a friends-with-benefits-thing. She had just passed his apartment whenever she felt like it and he took her random appearances very casually, just like she did with his frequent disappearances. He had told her that, with his secret-ass-job and all, she shouldn’t worry if he’d be gone one day. And that was exactly what had happened. One day, after struggling with the spare-key he had given her, she remembered it clearly, Yaël had walked into his apartment and it had been empty. Not empty like nobody was home, but empty like nobody was even living there. Every single piece of furniture had been taken out.

She hadn’t been heartbroken or anything, though, since she hadn’t been in love with him. That and he had warned her. It had been cozy and comfortable as long as it lasted. She missed that little, easy cocoon.

Yaël closed her eyes for what seemed like just a second. The thing she unwittingly did with Bucky on quiet moments like these, was winding a lock of his hair around her finger. So when she felt actual hair between her fingers, her eyes flung back open again. She looked up to check how uncomfortable Peter was feeling about her invading his hair, but it seemed like he hadn’t noticed.

She let go of his hair, but kept laying on the comfortable spot called Parker’s legs. Her thoughts fluttered to another place. “What were you crying for before I came in?” she asked. Peter didn’t answer immediately, so Yaël assumed he was sleeping.

“I, uh… I said something I shouldn’t have said to Tony, and he took it badly,” he muttered quietly after a little while. Okay, he wasn’t sleeping. Yaël nodded to sign that he should keep on talking. “You know about Harry, right?”

“The Green Goblin-dude?”

“Yes, he used to be my friend before, well, the Green Goblin. He was a normal guys, he just had some trouble and… Well, he became the Goblin,” something in Peter’s voice changed, it trembled as he whispered the words: “He killed Gwen.” Yaël turned her head and looked at her friend.

“That’s horrible!” Peter shook his head.

“Yes, it is, but the thing is…I believe there’s still a piece of my friend in that creature.” Yaël bit her lip and nibbled a bit on it. So he killed Gwen, but Peter had still hope for the guy. Maybe Peter was just desperate, maybe he was hoping that he didn’t lose both Gwen and Harry…Or maybe he was right, and there was still some Harry left in the Goblin.

“What did you do?” she asked suspiciously.

“I- Tony- Well, they locked him up, you know.”

“Well, yeah, he did some horrible shit, Peter. You can’t deny that, hell, he even attacked you two times already-“

“ Three…”

“WHAT?!” Peter waved his hand, he shifted on his place. “Calm down, that’s what I’m trying to tell you… I went to visit him in his cell.” To make sure Yaël didn’t have the chance to yell again, he just kept talking. “I just needed to see him with my own two eyes, you know? They’re trying to find a cure for him, but I think they’re not trying hard enough!”

Peter glanced at Yaël, like he was waiting for her to freak out and scold him, but she didn’t. Instead, she kept her mouth shut and signed him to keep on talking. Peter looked a bit confused, but resumed his story.

“So, I don’t think that seeing me freed Harry from the Goblin…instead, the Goblin started attacking me. Luckily Tony and Steve noticed, and they came in t-to save me…” Yaël looked up when she heard a muffled sniff. Peter had put his arm over his mouth to silence his shaky breath a bit. His eyes were wet and red again, just like they were when she had walked in. Crap, she wasn’t really good at comforting people, so she gave him her best shot and patted the leg she was still laying on.

“You know, honey, I get why you went to see him. He was your friend and you just don’t want to give up on him, do you?”

Peter shook his head. “N-no, but instead of being grateful that Tony rescued me, I told him that he might be my father, but he wasn’t my dad…”

Auch! Damn, that must’ve hurt Tony a lot. “Why?”

“I guess because he didn’t understand why I visited Harry…that and I was angry that nobody seemed to be able to cure him.”

Okay. Yaël jumped up, pointing her finger at Peter and then at herself.

“We need to fix this!”

“We?” Peter cocked his eyebrow, not understanding what she was talking about.

“Well, heck, no, you need to fix this. Stark doesn’t even like me! But still, this needs to be fixed. You really fucked this shit up, Stark!”

“Uh…I’m Peter,” he tried to correct her, but his face quickly turned a bit shocked as she immediately turned to him and poked him sharply in his chest.

“But you’re a Stark, aren’t you! And you eff-in’ Starks seem to be really talented in freaking people out! What you said, was not cool, Peter!”

“Like I don’t realize that!” he was taking over her energy, which made him talk back at her with some frustration. But Yaël could easily handle that, she even threw him a wide grin and grabbed his shoulder.

“Well, then you should think about which words to use when you’re going to apologize to him, because he surely didn’t deserve your shit-talk. Unless, he does because he’s a big douche bag, well?” Peter shook his head, straightening his backmade him looked taller than he was already all of a sudden.

“No, he’s a great man and a good father, I think… No, I know he is! I’m going to clean this mess up!”

“Atta girl!” Yaël said as she slapped Peter’s butt when she walked passed him to leave his room. And for a second, she asked herself if this was how it felt like to be a big sister.

Well, of course a sister wouldn’t sleep with her own brother, but she was glad that misery got cleared out.


	20. Chapter 20

_Heard your lesson about aquarelle-painting today was a great success?_

_“Yup, teens apparently love fiddling with water and colors, just like toddles do_ ,” Yaël thought back to Charles. She had just arrived at the front door of the apartment building. She was only a few staircases away from kicking out her shoes and bingewatching hershows.

_And how was training?_

_“Productive_.”

_Too productive or just a normal daily amount of productive?_

_“Tss, please!”_ Was he checking on her or was he trying to take over her life?

 _Yaël_?

 _“… A normal amount of productive, Sweetie_.”

 _What did you do?_ The way he was interested in her normal, daily life, was what made Charles such a sweetheart.

So Yaël explained to him that she was still trying to figure out how to make some sort of battle team or army out of her own powers. Of course, this time she didn’t waste herself completely in her training.  After that, Charles had to go to a meeting, so they said goodbye. They’d see or hear each other the next day anyways.

 

* * *

 

Some odd smell filled her nose as soon as she opened the door of her apartment. Yaël couldn’t really place the scent, though.

“BONZAI!” Yaël thought she’d get a heart attack when Wade jumped from behind the sofa. She didn’t even get the time to think about how the heck he got in (afterwards she remembered he had made a spare key), before he pulled out something little from his pockets. That little thing happened to be a pull bomb.

Yaël saw how he pulled the chords and instead of a little blow…the whole apartment exploded. The force of the explosion caused Yaël to fly back out of the door. Something sharp stung her back, but there was so much fire and heat, she couldn’t open her eyes to see what was happening to her. Her arm scraped against something, for a second, Yaël had the chance to open her eyes again and saw that she was falling down and that her arm was scraping against the concrete wall. Before she could pull her arm back, she severely smacked against her back.

When she gained consciousness, Yaël tried to open her eyes, but she could only keep them open for a few seconds. Everything looked blurry, but she could distinguish the fire somewhere above her, coming from the hole in her wall, leading to the hallway next to her apartment. Something smelled awful, like burned flesh. She knew exactly where she was: the trash-alley. Her head felt too heavy to even think about the fact that she was laying in dirt, stench and months old thrash. The only thing that was filling her mind, was the pain she felt, so it didn’t take her long to go unconscious again.

The world around her was shaking, forcing her to open her eyes again. She didn’t even notice it was night already, or that there was a stray cat who rolled himself up against her waist. The only thing she saw, was her own face, staring back at her viciously.

“Ståopp, beiskaldi!” Get up, bitch, she heard the woman whose face was hanging right above her own grunt in Norwegian. Yaël blinked a few times and saw a few features of the face that looked like her own change. The ochre eyes turned brown, the colorful hair turned blonde.

“Mach gjøre in innsatsvur å snechen Sil til meg!” At least do the effort to speak Sil to me, Yaël threw back at her sister. Hadn’t Yaël made Nilla stab herself multiple times back on Helvegen? Oh, right, she climbed back up again after that, the painless twat.

“Then I might as well speak the heathen language of this doomed planet,” Nilla answered with a thick accent, refusing to speak the dialect queen Völuspá disapproved. Yaël didn’t even bother to explain that English wasn’t the only language spoken on earth. The girl came from a planet as big as Belgium and three quarters of it were only lakes and woods.

“What are you even doing here? How did you get here?” Yaël asked not quite friendly as she tried to get up, but that movement send a sting of pain through her whole body, which made her give in immediately, like the pain was electrocuting her.

“The queen sends me.”

“Why the fuck would she do that?!” Her crossed answer delivered her a slap in the face from her own little sister, which made the cat jump up and run off with a hiss.

“You only speak about her with respect, you listen me?” Again, Yaël didn’t feel like correcting her sister’s vocabulary. When Yaël didn’t answer to that, Nilla started talking again. “She wants to uhm… rekrut-“

“recuit-“

“Whatever, she wants you to join her. She has big plans.” Yaël cocked her eyebrow.

“After all this time? I’m on earth for a whole wile now! By the way, what kind of big plans and why does she need me for that, she has a psycho version of me already.” Yaël received another smack, way harder than the last one this time.

“She didn’t really tell us the plans, only that she needs much strength, you help her with that.”

“Yeah, sure,” Yaël grunted sarcastically, hoping that someone would find her in this alley and fix her. She felt dizzy, but refused to close her eyes again. This woman in front of her killed Raido. If Yaël could, she’d drink Nilla’s blood.

“If I’m so important now, then tell me why the king and queen banished me in the first place.”

“The king doesn’t know about this, but the Queen demanded your banishment just so you wouldn’t get executed. You see, she knew she’d need you and now is the time for you to join us again,” she sounded like joining the Queen was an honor, something Yaël should’ve been looking forward to. But she had bad luck, because Yaël didn’t want to have anything to do with these sketchy actions the Queen was planning.

“So this woman sends you to a complete different planet, just to find me? How did you even manage to do that? There are more than seven billion people on earth!” Nilla straightened her back and casually cracked her fingers. She would’ve been beautiful if she wasn’t so brainwashed and crazy.

“The Queen has her sources, she found the one who used you to attack this town in the first place.” “Who the f- Thanos? Loki?”

“The first one, I think, but all of that doesn’t matter. I don’t even get why she wants to use you instead of me. You aren’t even that powerful. Look at me, I’ve been training for eras!”  Nilla surely seemed frustrated. Only then it stroke what her little sister looked like. She went totally undercover, wearing some jeans and a comfortable, fluffy, blush-colored sweater. Nobody would think she’s an assassin with this ‘innocent’ look of hers. Her battle scars and muscles were all covered away, and she didn’t even wear the battle stripes on her face.

This whole story was so vague. Yaël never noticed the Queen was so powerful she could send people to other planets. Nor did she ever seemed to have an interest in Yaël, but Nilla’s story sounded logical. Of course she wasn’t executed, Völuspá needed her. But what were these strange plans Nilla was talking about? Yaël had a bad feeling about this situation.

“I think I’m going to refuse this offer, thanks,” Yaël answered dryly, but determined. Nothing this woman could say, was going to change her decision. Nilla smirked.

“Oh, but you aren’t in a state to refuse, are you?” Well, Yaël couldn’t even move properly.

“I’m not going with you and I’ll give you a hard time if you’re trying to kidnap me,” Yaël answered dangerously.

“The queen told me you’d say stuff like that, but don’t worry. I’ve been keeping an eye on you for a few weeks now, I know who your friends are and where they live. Like that boy with his aunt.” She was talking about Peter! Yaël gritted her teeth. “Or that man with her motorcycle.”

“ _His_ motorcycle.” Nilla’s ‘innocent’ slaps were gone, instead she full forcedly punched Yaël in the face. Yaël felt blood drip out of the corner of her mouth. 

“Or the woman with the dark clothes, who seems to live with the motorcycle-man.” Wanda. “And of course the man in the wheelchair. And not to forget, the man with the weird skin condition.” Yaël snorted.

“If you’re trying to blackmail me by saying you’re going to kill Wade, I can assure you you’re going to have a hard time.” Another punch, but Yaël could take it, she just kept on staring her sister in the eyes.

Suddenly Yaël realized something.

“You put the gas open in my apartment!” Nilla’s smirk came back.

“Yes, I wish I was the one who’d let it explode, but this friend of yours was a very unexpected turn to my plan.”

“What was the use of trying to kill me if you needed to recruit me?” Nilla shrugged.

“The queen told me you were unkillable. I could only hurt you badly, which I tried to do. Well, it somehow worked out too, but not totally by my doing. What a shame.” What was that girl’s problem?

“Why do you hate me so much? I can’t remember hurting you! We’re sisters!” Suddenly Nilla’s face came dangerously close to hers again.

“Do you know what it feels like if your father chooses your sister over you? He abandoned me, while you were the one that should’ve been abandoned! You think they treated me well in that castle? Like their own daughter? They didn’t! I got trained, day in, day out, just to be a fit pawn!”

Then she got back up, all the anger disappeared from her face again as she pointed at Yaël.

“You’re going with me, like it or not. And otherwise, I start attacking, hurting, even killing these friends of yours.” She grabbed Yaël by her hair, to which Yaël grunted. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

“No,” Yaël hissed. Nilla let go of Yaël, which made her head smack against the concrete again. She saw black spots in front of her eyes, but kept focusing on not going unconscious. Nilla backed away with an evil grin on her face.

“Good, I love to play games. See you later, Yaël. Maybe then, I’ll be wearing your friends’ skins as a jacket.”

“NO!” Yaël yelled, but Nilla didn’t stop moving. Just a few seconds, and she’d be gone, going after Yaël’s new family.

Yaël used all the energy she had leftto shoot fire to her sister. Luckily she didn’t have to move for that. Nilla dodged it, looking surprised. Of course, attacking a fire-steering woman with fire wasn’t the best tactic ever. So Yaël went over to water, but as there was no water nearby, she retracted water from her own body, which make her throat immediately feel dry. A string smacked Nilla against the wall and started freezing her. Of course, Nilla melted that down immediately.

“Well, well, well,” she grinned as she stepped out of the little wall of ice Yaël had tried to create. Yaël bit away her pain and tried to get back on her feet, with not that much success. By the time she was on her knees, she had to quickly dodge a ball of fire coming from Nilla by steering it away. She pulled herself up on the wall, leaning against it.

Her whole body stung and for a split-second, her whole vision went black. Luckily it came back right in time to steer away another fireball. With a hiss, Yaël stomped her foot against the ground, causing the concrete to sink Nilla’s feet in it and make her stuck. Nilla screamed out of frustration and fired the fireballs more and more quickly. Yaël send them back, but it took her a lot of effort to keep in focusing. A few of them, as she wasn’t always fast enough, burned her hands and her fingertips. Sometimes they even got to her stomach.

With a few movements between the fireballs, Yaël managed to make the concrete crack and build a wall around her sister. Of course, in between, she still had to dodge the fire Nilla was now steering in big, strong strings, aggressive enough to set a whole forest on fire.

“NO!” the younger woman yelled as Yaël managed to pack in her arms. Of course, she started spitting fire after that. So Yaël had to build around her face too, leaving just a few holes to breathe, but not big enough to do much damage with her fire. That, and if she’d try to steer fire in there, she’d be baking herself.

Yaël fell back on her knees and let the unconsciousness finally take her over again. Sometimes she woke up, hearing Nilla curse. Then she saw the moon, but the next time she saw the sun coming up. Sometimes she heard sirens, but there was no hope as this alley she was laying in was so small and unnoticeable. She was sweating, but she was cold on the same time and she had no energy left to get up and go search for help. She tried it sometimes, but it only led her back to complete darkness.

At some point, she thought she could fly. Her body lifted from the ground, feeling like a little feather. Someone whispered to her, but it took her a little time to get what the words sounded like.

“Yaël, wake up, girlie…” it was Wade’s voice. She tried opening her eyes, but the sun stung so badly she kept on blinking. “Hi,” he said with a smile while carrying her out of the trash.

“Nilla…” she tried to explain, her arm didn’t work with her as she tried to point at the little concrete cell she had built around her sister.

“Yeah, I called around. Someone is coming to get her out. They’re bringing her to cells in the compound.” Yaël nodded as she closed her eyes again, good. “I’m going to bring you to the compound too.” Her eyes flung back open.

“B-but, to the cells?!”

“No, idiot, to the medical center firstly and then to your new room.” Right, she didn’t have a place to stay anymore. All her stuff, her cello, her new clothes, her sofa, they were all gone.

“Tony?” she asked quietly.

“Steve’s going to fix that part. Are you in pain?”

“Maybe.”

“No worries, there’s an ambulance waiting on the street. I’ve been searching for you for hours. I’m so sorry I blew up your apartment, I didn’t notice the bomb was so strong.” And for once in his life, Wade really looked like he was sorry. 

“It was Nilla, she opened the gas in my apartment. If you hadn’t set it on fire, she would’ve.” Yaël gritted her teeth as every move Wade made, her body itched and stung.

 

When the ambulance stopped in a big garage, leading to the compound, a few health caretakers rolled the stretcher she was laying on inside and drove her to what looked like an operation room. There she was greeted by a doctor who introduced herself as Dr. Cho. Wade waited outside.

The woman cleaned out her wounds, most of them had started infecting, which had been unavoidable as she had been laying in thrash for hours. While Dr. Cho was doing that, Yaël did her best not to jump off the stretcher, nor set the building on fire.

“I’m so, so sorry beforehand if I somehow hurt you doing this!” Yaël squeaked while biting on her cheek.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” the woman answered dryly. And at some point Yaël somehow managed to let a bottle of antiseptic freeze and burst, so a splinter of the glass cut in the doctor’s shoulder.

“Damn it!” she cursed as she grabbedher shoulder.

“Oh, god! Sorry!” Yaël yelled as Dr. cho walked outside for a second to get a new bottle and came back in, cleaning her shoulder. She disinfected her hands again and put on new gloves before she went on with stitching the wounds.

“Okay…Now I’m going to use the Cradle to create synthetic skin, so your wounds will heal more easily-“

“Hey, wait a minute!” Yaël pulled her arm back out of Cho’s hands.

“What?”

“I don’t want synthetic skin!”

“Why not?” the doctor asked flabbergasted. Some dude with a bow once told her it itched like hell. What was his name again? She felt like a little kid who didn’t want to have an injection, but her memory really reported someone warning her for that treatment. So after a whole discussion about itching, Dr. Cho decided to let Yaël suffer a bit more than she should’ve and put away the cradle. Afterwards, Yaël stayed in that room for the night, because apparently they were still preparing her bedroom. Yaël didn’t really get why, because all she needed was a bed.

The next morning she wobbled around the compound, her arm hooked through Steve’s. The fun thing was, Yaël seemed to vaguely remember her way through the building. It was no wonder as she used to live there a whole while ago.

“You’re not really lucky, are you?” Steve joked to her.

“Nah, but life would be boring otherwise. Do you have news on Nilla?”

“Yeah, she keeps trying to set her cell on fire. But the thing is made of the same materials that were used to lock you back then, so she simply can’t get out and only hurts herself with her aggression.”

“She surely is a fighter,” Yaël said bitterly.

“I noticed, a fighter is a bit of a weak word to describe her.”

Yaël laughed, which was followed by an “Auch!”, because laughing hurt.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break anything, you know that?” Steve said while patting her shoulder with his other hand. Yaël nodded.

After a little while, Steve stopped in front of a door.

“Now here we are, at your room! Still the same one as back then, but I made some changes so you’d feel at home.” The first thing Yaël saw when she opened the door, was Wade, laying naked on a brand-new-looking sofa, only covering his parts with a box of chocolates. Steve looked completely shocked.

“Whoa, thanks Steve!” Yaël smirked teasingly.

“Please, put on some clothes, mister Wilson…” Steve mumbled as he looked away and sighed.

“You want a chocolate?” Wade asked.

“Sure,” Yaël sat down next to him and chose one from the box that now wasn’t covering a thing anymore. “Now, please stop annoying Steve and put on some pants, Wade,” she said after letting Steve suffer for a moment.

“But mooom, I don’t wanna put my pants on!” he whined while climbing out of the sofa. She slapped his butt when he walked off, into the bathroom next to her bedroom.

“Dude, I have my own bathroom?” Steve nodded, still looking red.

Yaël looked around. The place looked so fresh, decorated with plants of all kinds. She even had one of these fluffy rugs next to her bed. Well, she actually had a bed, instead of a few piled up mattresses. Without a warning, she jumped onto Steve and gave him a tight hug, which actually hurt a lot, so she quietly yelped.

“You’re the best, this wasn’t necessary at all. I don’t even know how I can thank you for thi-“ Someone interrupted her by scraping his throat. Both of them looked up and saw Stark, standing in the doorway. His face was emotionless. Steve immediately pulled himself from Yaël’s arms.

“Tony, I-“ Starkput his hand in the air to stop Steve in the middle of his sentence.

“I didn’t know you were bringing in another one of your strays…” he said reproachfully.

“You didn’t tell him?!” Yaël tried to look Steve in the eye, but he didn’t look at her, he only stared back at Tony.

Tony, who, for a second, glanced a bit surprised at Yaël for having his back. Not that she really was having his back, but she couldn’t stay there if Tony disapproved it. They would only annoy the crap out of each other.

“No, I didn’t. Look, Tony, it was an emergency. Her apartment exploded, she could’ve been dead! It took Wade hours to find her and if he didn’t she-”

“It’s okay,” Tony said dryly, not at all sounding like he was okay with it. He probably just wanted to stop Steve’s rattling. A tense silence followed. Yaël couldn’t even look at the two men, she felt like she was an intruder in this conversation, even though it was about her.

“Look,” she started talking, wanting to clean this mess up. They shouldn’t be fighting about her. “I’ll move out as soon as I have enough money, don’t worry. And until that moment, I’ll help out wherever you need me to. I’m not here to take advantage of you. Just don’t let me do anything technical, I’m not as smart as you or your son.” Tony looked a bit startled, but that emotion went off his face again very quickly. He just stared at her, like he was thinking of an answer. But yet, he just nodded and turned back to Steve after a few seconds.

“Something else I should know?”

Steve frowned, like the serious man he was, when he answered: “Yes, we have a new prisoner.”

“Oh?” Tony cocked his eyebrow, but waited to hear Steve out before saying anything about it.

“Yes, it’s her sister. She somehow managed to get here and is after Yaël. Good thing Yaël somehow managed to pin the girl down in all that chaos.” With that, Tony just nodded and put his finger for his lips, thinking. Then he signed at Steve to follow him out of the room, leaving Yaël alone.

She wasn’t mad about that, though, she could use some sleep. On her bedside table stood a bottle of painkillers, waiting for her. At first, Yaël was a bit headstrong and was sure that she could fall asleep without those. But as soon as she laid down everything hurt again. So badly, that it seemed the injuries were never taken care of. Dr. Cho had warned her that because of the many hours her wounds had been exposed to so much filth and bacteria, some of the wounds could stay infected for a little time. Yaël grabbed the bottle of painkillers with one hand and screwed it open.


	21. Chapter 21

It had taken a little time before her wounds were fully healed, some of them had gotten infected again and again, so Dr. Cho had constantly been cleaning Yaël’s wounds and refreshing her bandages. She had also given Yaël a preach that she should’ve stayed home for a week, instead of going back to work immediately, so it was a bit her own fault she hadn’t healed that easily. But Yaël didn’t want to miss playing chess with Charles every break , nor working with Scott every now and then, nor Logan who seldom collaborated with her to improve the lessons while making bitter statements.

The day after she arrived at the compound, it was the first of May, her ‘birthday’. The birthday that Fury had pasted on her file just so people wouldn’t question her earthliness by her age. So Yaël bought herself a cupcake in the morning, one of those with much soft-pink-colored butter cream on top of it. When she finally got on the bus to go to the school, she opened the box and clapped her hands in joy before she took a huge bite of the cupcake.

‘Happy birthday, Yaël’, she thought happily while licking her lips. She didn’t really care no one knew the date of her earth-birthday. On Helvegen, a birthday was celebrated by the start of a new decade. On that day, everyone came together and celebrated each other’s life with a big festival, which always ended with a big campfire and dancing. Of course, that way of celebrating a birthday had its charms too, but on earth, a birthday was more personal, about one person. Sometimes two, but never a whole kingdom.

Yaël discovered that day, while teaching classes, that, though she enjoyed pampering herself with sweets, she also missed the big festival. Not that she wanted a party or anything, she just missed that Helvegian habit. She hadn’t seen it in at least an era as, being banished, she wasn’t allowed to go and celebrate with the others.

Of course, her father and she celebrated it together every decade, which had his charms too. Well, that actually looked a bit more like how the people on earth celebrated it, but more… cozy? Warm? There were no gifts, it was only about the people, the family.  She didn’t know how to put it, but the vibe was different. And the last few decades, since Cem passed, she had been celebrating her birthday all on her own.

Well, no, last year Steve made her some dinner, which felt a bit like home but also totally not. Which was okay, memories shouldn’t be deliberately reconstructed.

That same day, it was parent-teacher conference day at the school, so she had to work late. Not that any of the parents wanted to meet the arts-teacher, she wasn’t important enough. Yet, she worked in that school and if all her colleagues needed to stay, she did it too as she was a part of the team. Team-spirit, yeah! So Yaël sat in her classroom, whole alone, for hours, just doodling a bit and playing some cello. Not that she was angry about that, the itching and stinging of her wounds were annoying her, so she appreciated that lack of parents who expected her to have a happy chitchat.

After some time, one of the teens walked in. It was Surge, all by herself. Yaël knew that some of these kids had no parents anymore and others were abandoned for being mutants. There were kids whose parents didn’t even know about their mutation or the school and who thought they send their kid just to a regular boarding school, but of course, those didn’t get invited for the parent’s day. All the teens chose if they invited their parents themselves.

Surge, or Noriko, ran away from her parents when she was very young, as her father didn’t believe in mutants. So after that, she lived on the streets until she somehow found her way to the school. At least, that was what Scott told Yaël about her. He ran over most of Yaël’s students, just so she knew they background if one of them should ever reacted a bit differently to something.

Surge made eye contact with Yaël, like she wanted to ask if it was okay for her to hang around in the most quiet and desolated classroom of the whole building. Yaël just nodded, which got followed by Surge sitting down with a thud behind one of the classroom desks. She pulled a sketchbook out of her backpack and started sketching.

Just half an hour later, someone politer than Surge knocked on the door before walking in. This time, it was Dust, who, of course, searched for an escape from all the happy teens with their parents. According to Wade’s gossiping which later got confirmed by Scott, Wolverine found Dust, or Sooraya, as a slave in Afghanistan. So there was no question that her family wasn’t able to come to the school, as nobody even knew who or where they were.

“Miss –“ the teen looked at Yaël, who already knew what she was going to ask.

“Yeah, sure, take a seat,” Yaël invited the teen as she gestured to her almost empty classroom. Dust, who apparently still, or again had a misunderstanding with her roommate Surge, sat down on a chair out of Surge’s reach and started reading.

And just when Yaël thought her club of loneliness was complete, Icarus walked in.

“Miss Yaël-“

“Yup!” she threw him a sweet, understanding smile. His family probably didn’t even show up. Or maybe he didn’t invite them at all. However, it was none of her business. Icarus nodded calmly and thanked her. After that, he walked towards one of the guitars in the back of the room and started tuning it. Jay’s, or Icarus’s, wings moved a bit more and more open the longer he fiddled with the instrument.

He always tried to hide them or at least keep them folded neatly, but every time he got a guitar in his hands, he forgot to focus on them, which caused his wings to naturally open or sometimes even flutter a bit. Yaël always loved these moments, because Icarus’s wings were really magnificent, and it was a shame he tried to keep them as discrete as possible.

That evening, before Yaël went home, Charles came to her and gave her orange butter cookies.

“I conceived the idea that you’re not really used to annual parties or birthday presents. I believe you Helvegians celebrate life with food and company, don’t you?” Yaël nodded a bit flabbergasted. “Good, then please accept my and Steve’s company, a pint and these cookies the rest of the evening.”

“Oh no, did you invite more people?”

“Well, no, it’s not the new beginning of a decade and I want to take your habits and rituals in account. Steve happened to have the same idea as he actually came over to pick you up and cook for you in the compound. I thought, maybe we could just celebrate with the three of us?” Well, what a weird but wonderful birthday had that been!

 

* * *

 

 

“So, who do you have training with today?” Steve said when he walked into the kitchen and caught her having breakfast. As soon as Yaël’s wounds were finally healed, Steve had organized a training schedule for her. She had been grateful, until she noticed that he wanted her to train almost all the time. Every week, she got another partner to train with, because Steve noticed Yaël kind of locked herself up in her room to not disturb anyone. 

“Fwint!” Yaël answered with a mouth full of cornflakes.

“Clint, huh? You like him,” Steve laughed while walking towards the fridge.

“I do?”

“Yes, you once told me you liked his none-judging, joyful attitude.” He pulled out a bottle of water. Steve knew that Yaël was about nervous about meeting these people as she didn’t really remember them, but they did remember her of course.

So training with Clint would be her first real confrontation with someone she used to know, but doesn’t anymore. Of course she had already seen him and the other hang around in the building, but they were always busy, and she didn’t want to disturb them.

Yaël felt a bit nervous as she was standing in front of door, leading to the compound’s gymnasium/training room. Something flew passed right next to her ear as soon as she opened the door. With a shocked yelp, Yaël looked aside to see what it was. An arrow, stuck in the side of the door, was still wiggling from the speed it had been making.

“Holy-“

“Hi!” A sandy-blonde man in front of her interrupted her with a wide grin. Where the hell did he come from?!  The man brought his hand towards her and Yaël shook it. “As you might not remember me, my name’s Clint.” She nodded, of course he was Clint, who else would be shooting arrows at her.

Wait a second, a man with a bow…

“You told me the synthetic skin itched like hell!” Yaël jumped towards Clint enthusiastically from reminding him a bit.

“Err…” he scratched his head. “Whoa, that’s a long time ago. You remembered that?”

“Yes, thanks to you I knew I had to refuse that stuff when Dr. Cho wanted to use it on me!” Yaël nodded proudly. Clint looked a bit surprised at her, like he was trying to find out if she was joking or not. Then, he burst out in laughing.

“What?” Yaël asked confusedly.

“You really believed that shit?!” Clint huffed out. Her eyes grew big.

“You have to be kidding me…” He kept on laughing, like he was stuck in it, and shook his head.

Yaël cocked her eyebrow. God bloody damn it! She could’ve been healed a week ago! Clint’s laughing stopped abruptly when he smelled smoke. He looked down and saw his pants were on fire.

“HOLY SHIT, YOU PYROMANIAC!” He yelled at her while slapping around, trying to put out the fire. With a smirk, Yaël make the fire disappear like it had never even been there. Clint looked up, also smirking, but his smile looked a bit more dangerously. “Oh, girl, this means war!”

 

* * *

 

 

The days went on like that. Yaël went to work, came home and got beaten in every single training. Well, that was because, at first, she didn’t want to hurt Clint too badly, so she didn’t show him her fullest potential. Even though that made her an extremely easy victim for Clint. Dr. Cho didn’t say a thing about her coming over every evening after training to get her wounds healed, but Yaël could hear her sigh.

Yaël had been training with Steve before, but it was clear he had been easy on her, because now, every morning when she tried to get out of her bed, she felt like she had been hit by a train. Luckily, she was still on her sleeping pills, so her muscular pains didn’t keep her awake.

It was training with Wanda, the next week, that forced her to show more of herself. The psychic girl most of the times read what Yaël’s next move was going to be a second before she did it. Yaël, thinking too much about how to neatly order her next move, was no match against the Scarlet Witch. So after a frustrated grunt from ending on her back and climbing back up again and again, Yaël shot a spontaneous string of fire at her friend and pulled her down in such a speed, she managed to cause Wanda laying on the ground, flabbergasted. After that, their training only got more and more intense. At one point, a guy had opened the door to ask who wanted to join him for pizza.

“Sam, watch out!” Wanda had yelled at him as she was just going to send out a force of energy, but he wisely closed the door immediately after he almost got hit by one of Yaël’s ice-spears.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey, alien-girl! You’re training with me today!” The voice pulled Yaël out of her thoughts and made her notice that she had almost put the fork, with spaghetti rolled around it, in her nose instead of her mouth. Yaël blinked a few times and stared at the red-haired woman, she needed a minute to let her words sink in.

“It’s Friday,” Yaël answered without thinking about how rude she sounded. Maybe she should’ve said ‘hello’ first and ask the woman’s name, but nope.

“Yeah, so?” The redhead put her hands onto her hips and cocked her eyebrow sassily.

“Friday eve is my moment of me-time! Cap planned it in that way! Besides, it’s still my week with Wanda AND it’s already 9pm.” Steve had given her off on Fridays, because she needed some spare-time and she was always way to tired, thus unfocussed, after a week of working.

“Yeah, yeah, stop whining. I’m just free from training Peter, so I already had to listen to him for a whole session.” This time it was Yaël who cocked her eyebrow.

“And what about next week? Am I still on the schedule with Stark?” Yaël didn’t really see why Steve would put him on her schedule, unless he wants them to become friends or something. Because fighting and cursing at each other while bathing in sweat would stabilize their friendship, right? Idiot.

“Nope, me,” the woman answered dryly while pointing at herself.

“What, was he afraid that I was going to hurt his feelings? Or did he think I was going to blow up the city again?” Yaël sneered sarcastically while poking in her pasta with her fork.

“You’re eating his supper, aren’t you?” The woman crossed her arms.

Yaël put another scoop of pasta in her mouth and said: “No…” Faking her unknowingness while there were strips of spaghetti still hanging out of her mouth. The plastic box next to her on the cabinet with Tony’s name on it didn’t really help her fake-innocence. But she had an excuse: Stark was never in the compound and she had found this box in the freezer. God knows how long it had been in there, it needed to get rescued.

Yaël started rolling another scoop, but before she could put it in her mouth, she noticed the woman was still staring at her and was annoyingly tapping her foot. So Yaël put her fork back down.

“Wait, do you mean, training is RIGHT NOW?!”

The woman rolled her eyes, which probably meant ‘yes’.

“But my spaghetti…” Yaël pouted.

“It wasn’t even yours to begin with, now come, astronaut.” The woman turned around and walked out the door with straight back, taking big steps. Yaël quickly jumped off her chair and almost tripped in the hurry, ignoring the fact that she had already went through some kind of breakdown after pushing her body too far with too much training and way too little food to fuel herself not that long ago.

“Can I at least know your name?” she asked while jumped on one leg as she tried to tie the laces of her shoe. The woman turned around very quickly and elegantly, her hair swung with her movement, and smiled, it was actually the first time Yaël saw her smile, though there was an obvious underlying emotion underneath it, as if she’s sad about something, perhaps?

“So, you really forgot everything, did you?” Yaël didn’t answer, but she suddenly saw the woman standing in a forest. She had visited Yaël in a dream already, but Yaël had chosen to focus on another element back then and now she didn’t remember this woman, just like she hadn’t remembered Clint. Maybe it was her fault, for not choosing to focus on her back then in that dream, but these dreams had been so unpredictable and after she had chosen to follow Loki, the other hadn’t come back anymore, like Loki had completely taken over the dream-world.

“My name,” the woman said while holding the door open for Yaël “is Natasha Romanoff.”

Yaël learned that Nat and she used to be good friends, although they didn’t start off that way. Well, she was friends with nobody when she firstly arrived on earth, since she kind of made New York crumble. But since Steve seemed to like Yaël and trust her, Natasha got a bit curious and started watching the moves Yaël made and analyzed every word she said.

Okay, more like every word she learned in English, since she’d only speak Norwegian and Sil. But the spy figured out that being some kind of terrorist or being a blind-raged weapon without soul didn’t fit Yaël’s profile. Of course Yaël hadn’t known better back then, during the attack, since the Chitauri had managed to trigger her until she had reached a blind spot.

So after a little while, Natasha started having conversations with the weird alien-girl. Nothing deep, but just light conversations which built up to, after Yaël had stayed in the compound for a little while back then, joking around and triggering other residents with their sarcasm. That didn’t make Tony like her more, though.

 

* * *

 

 

Stark’s trainings always got rescheduled.

First, it was Nat who replaced him and drilled the living shit out of Yaël. Then there was Sam Wilson. He was a very joyful, sweet dude and he always took her out for a run around the domain, which she appreciated since the only room in the building she had seen already, except for her room and the kitchen, was the training room. That and it wasn’t like running with Steve, whose tempo was just… inhuman. Not that she was human, but his tempo was less human than her complete background.

Then there was Rhodey, who focused more on her how she moved her body. Well, basically every single fucking time she moved, he told her to straighten her back or bend more through her knees. Even though it was annoying as hell, Yaël knew the man meant well. With all the training she did at that point, she needed to make sure she wouldn’t do any physical damage to her body by moving in wrong ways.

Bit by bit, Yaël got more and more used to the superheroes living around her. It wasn’t like living in a normal family or anything, as none of them could even define as being normal, but it was fun. They seemed to accept her too and let her do her thing. But that didn’t make her an Avenger, did it? And even though she was healed completely, and she was still taking her sleeping pills every night, there was something that kept her awake: Nilla.

Yaël couldn’t shake the feeling that Nilla knew things she wouldn’t tell, like she knew more about the Queen’s plans or…well, there were certainly things she kept to herself and Yaël needed to figure out what it was. Even if she had to do it all by herself.

 


	22. Chapter 22

The bell rang. But unlike the other teachers, Yaël wasn’t in a rush as her working day was over already. She sipped from her coffee and looked outside the window.  There were pink and blush-colored blossoms growing on the trees, wiggling in the wind. A few students were jogging around the domain. And to finish it all: the sun was shining. Of course it was, as it was the 2nd of July, but Yaël was very grateful for every day that yellow ball of light came out. She could feel its warmth through the window and loved every bit of it.

That morning she had received a text from Steve, saying he and the team were going on a mission again, this time all the way in Lagos, where-ever that was. Only Vision and Rhodey stayed at the compound, while Stark, being retired from the Avengers, stayed in the tower instead, as usual. Yaël hadn’t even seen the man walk around in the compound in the two months after she got there, which was a great addition for her plan.

Stark was never going to help her get through FRIDAY’s eye to get to Nilla, neither was Peter. Not that he wouldn’t want to help Yaël, she just knew he wouldn’t want to let her make the same mistake he had made, so she didn’t even bother asking his help. She had texted him to say good luck to Tony with the presentation today, knowing that both of them would be too busy to keep an eye on her.

“What are you planning to do?” Yaël jumped, she hadn’t heard Charles coming in. Of course, that man immediately noticed she was thinking about doing something not that smart. Could she tell him the truth? Or would he warn Stark?

Charles frowned, well, by this time he probably already read what was going on in her head. Yaël scratched her hand.

“Could you please _not_ warn Stark or anyone?” she asked desperately.

“How do I know this isn’t a suicide-mission? You know she’s dangerous, Yaël!” X answered sternly.

“And you know,” Yaël poked her finger against his chest “I can defend myself against her just perfectly.” Charles doubted for a second. It seemed like he tried to make a decision depending on how much he believed she was able to fight back as he was staring at her.

“I should call Stark,” he said quietly. Yaël gritted her teeth. Had she been practicing and training all this time just so still nobody would believe she was able to take care of herself? Then what had been the fucking use? “I’ll follow you, instead.”

“What?” Did he mean what she thought he meant? “You’re not going to tell Stark?” Her mouth fell open as he shook his head.

“No, but I don’t see what he could do to you if he knew what you’re going to do.”

“He’s just busy with a presentation today, he doesn’t need to be bothered with stuff like this.” That, and he could rage some more against her. She didn’t want to give him that pleasure, even though she remembered the doubt she had seen on his face after he had walked into her bedroom the day she arrived at the compound. Maybe he wasn’t such a big dick as he let her stay in the compound after all.

Sure, she did a whole lot of chores next to work and training. She vacuumed and cleaned the hallways and kitchen constantly and sometimes she did the laundry. Luckily, all of the residents had enough manners to do their own laundry most of the time. Sometimes they were all hanging around in the laundry-room, happily chattering while waiting until their machine is done with washing. Yep, Yaël surely appreciated those simple moments and this way, Tony couldn't complain about her not paying or doing anything.

Yaël nodded to Charles. “Okay…Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

 

While walking towards the automatic doors, Yaël understood that what she was about to do, was lower than low. It was going to be repulsive, no wait, _she_ was going to be repulsive. People were staring at her, but she wasn’t sure if they were staring because of the dress or because she was Yaël. Before she walked in, she pulled down her already very revealing dress some more, which, since he liked dressing her up so much, Wade had bought her.

 _You know, your vision on the manly brain is very stereotypical_.

 _Oh, shut up, Charles_ , Yaël bit back sarcastically.

With elegance she neared the lobby. The young boy that was typing vividly behind his laptop looked up when Yaël scraped her throat.

“H-how can I help you?” he blinked a few times and did his very best not to stare at her cleavage. Yaël felt incredibly guilty and really wanted to pull the thing up again, but she smiled instead.

“Hi, I’m looking for Jason?” she knew her hoarse voice only made the whole scene sound better.

“Yeah, uh, Jason… of course. I’ll, uh, I’ll call him for you, miss,” the receptionist sounded a bit bitter. He took the phone and dialed a number, Yaël didn’t need to follow the conversation so she looked around at the modern interior of the Stark Tower. The receptionist told her Jason was on his way, so she started walking around a bit. In her head, she saw herself walk out of the door and just disappear. She wasn’t really looking forward to see that hot dude, and surely not while wearing that skimpy dress.

Suddenly she felt a hand softly resting against her back. When she wanted to turn around, she almost bumped into the friggin’ model. His hair was lose this time and fell in waves over his shoulders. He had grown a beard and, of course, it suited him well. It made Yaël almost think of some of the Helvegian guys… if she could just braid his hair here and there and-

“Let’s take a walk, shall we?” Jason whispered, pulling her out of her admiration for his hair.

“Dude, I almost kicked the living shit out of you! Why do you sneak up on me like that?!” she hissed back, totally forgetting her plan to be sweet and soft. Jason smirked and let go of her, assuming that she’d follow him.

“You know I like to push you around a bit, Yaël,” he said while walking out of the automatic doors, leading back to the streets. Oh, Yaël surely knew what he meant.

Because she had decided to get to her sister a few weeks ago, she had been looking for a person who’d be able to help her. And since Stark wasn’t really an option (should she have tried to ask him? No…right?) and she didn’t want to put Peter nor any other Avenger in an uneasy position, she searched for another person with an easy access to the Tower or the Compound. Well, maybe she was taking risks she shouldn’t be taking if she’d just asked nicely to Tony, but maybe… maybe she was too stubborn.

“I’m sorry to ask, but _what_ are you wearing?” he put his hands in his pockets after opening his vest because of the warmth. The poor soul always had to wear a costume, being a receptionist in THE Stark Tower. Yaël looked down. Oh, right, her lovey-dovey-act.

“A dress?” she said dryly, before remembering that she shouldn’t be her usual dry self here. “Don’t you like it?” she threw him a sweet smile while blinking ‘flirtatious’. The man cocked his eyebrow, but Yaël saw twinkles of joy in his brown eyes. Was it working?

“Drop the act. I don’t care what you wear, but don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. I’m not dumb. If this is your vision on the manly brain, it’s very stereotypical,” he answered a bit dryly while leading her into a park. Yaël had to stop herself from letting her mouth drop open like a dumb twat.

Who did he think he was? Well, at least, there were enough trees in the park if she wanted to hide behind it in shame.

“Well, god-bloody-damn it!” she hissed instead.

_Hah!_

_Shut the fuck up, Charles_! His know-it-all-comments surely were not calming her down.

“What were you planning with that? Did you think that if you’d be wearing that dress, I’d immediately give you the access-card after looking at your boobs for a minute? I was going to give it to you anyway, since I promised it to you last time you walked in, wearing another one of these dresses, which hadn’t been necessary either.”

“Well, you could’ve told me that back then, so I knew I didn’t have to wear this shit today!” Were they fighting over this? It didn’t really feel like a fight, well, it kind off was a fun fight. Was that weird? A fun fight?

“I didn’t say you didn’t look good in it, though,” Jason threw her another smirk. The cheeky bastard! His smirks and flashes of arrogance kind of reminded her of…

Loki.

Shit, this wasn’t a good idea! Yaël needed to get that card as quick as possible and leave this dude alone. Not that Jason was going to manipulate her into taking over the world, but God knows what he had up his sleeve.

“Uh, do you have it?” she asked him. She did her best to not sound nervous, but inside she just wanted to take a sprint back to the compound. At least that would be a good warming up for the training with Vision later. Why hadn’t she just asked Stark for help?

“Of course.” With a smooth movement he pulled the card out of his breast pocket.

“Okay, so can I have it?” Please say yes.

“No.” And with that he put the card back into his pocket.

“Oh, fucking shit! What do you want from me? You said I didn’t have to act like a sugar-coated Betty Boob!” She was going to scratch that smirk from his face. Scratch the ‘fun fight’ part.

“You don’t, you’re just going to have this relaxing walk with me,” he answered without giving her a choice.

Oh, how he thought he was on the winning side, but he was actually just pushing all the wrong buttons. Yaël softly scraped the tips of her toes over the gravel before she put her foot down and in a blink of an eye, Jason’s feet sunk a few inches in the stone and mud, which hardened around his ankles, so he wasn’t able to walk anymore.

“Hah, gotcha!” Yaël grinned widely. Jason looked confusedly at his feet, but he didn’t seem panicked at all. She put her hands behind her back as she stepped in front of him confidently. She won. That was when she noticed everybody else who had been walking in the park, was quietly staring at her with big eyes.

Jason wasn’t freaking out, everyone else was.

A guy who had been walking his dog, was calling someone while staring at her with pure angst. Come on, was this what she had to deal with the rest of her life? Would every move she’d make with her powers turn all the spotlights onto her?

“Okay… So, that’s mine. Thanks for the effort,” she sighed while quickly pulling out the card from his pocket.

“Well, you got me there!” he threw his hands in the air like he surrendered. “One problem, though…” he suddenly sounded dead-serious.

“Being?” Yaël asked while putting the card in the back pocket of her pants.

“I think you have to leave.” His eyes flashed from person to person who were all staring at Yaël.

“Yeah, I know.” Suddenly she heard police sirens. She looked back at Jason who stared right back at her, both understanding that there was a chance they were coming for her. Yaël turned around and started walking away, leaving the park again.

She took small side-streets and tried not to look hurried or anything so she wouldn’t stand out too much. Yaël planned on walking away as far as possible and then taking a cab, since walking to the compound would take a whole while.

As she walked, she started thinking about Jason. Not that she wanted to, but now that she had the space and rest, he just popped up in her mind again. He had a few character traits similar to Loki, that’s true. But he wasn’t Loki at all and those traits weren’t all that bad.

Okay, yes, he was arrogant, but at least Yaël always knew what the man was thinking. Like, he didn’t really need her to be dressed up so she’d be able to brainwash him into giving her the card. He looked right through her intentions. Wait, was she thinking about Jason or about Loki now? Not Loki, she wasn’t missing his smirks… she wasn’t missing _anything_ about him… Or maybe she was just trying to convince herself? No! How fucked up would it be if she was missing that one guy who put her through all sorts of misery? Next to the brainwashing into the Chitauri-attack, they had fought a lot too. Sometimes really, physical fighting.

But yet, they somehow always ended up back in each other’s arms…  Wait, no, her mind was tricking her. She surely wasn’t missing Loki, she was just thinking about Jason and comparing him a bit with Loki, which was nothing wrong with. Because, unlike Loki, Jason had a normal job and wasn’t trying to rule over the planet. He was no evil trickster-genius, just a cocky bastard with whom Yaël could have discussions about the stupidest things too.

Was that a good character trait, though? Yaël’s heart raced. What did she actually want from him? One second she wants to leave him as soon as possible because he reminded her of Loki, the other second, she wants to talk to him again as she found him intriguing. Or maybe she just wanted to sleep with him, which wouldn’t shock her either, as he was damn hot.

A bit too hot, but luckily, after meeting him for the third time now, she didn’t communicate with him that awkwardly anymore. Well, they actually spoke very naturally to each other, but on the other hand, he had never been nervous to talk to her. This man was confusing the living shit out of her. But maybe he didn’t even want to see her after all of this anymore, she was just a weird alien-girl after all. And she was more than two-thousand years older than him.

Not that he needed to know that, right? Would he make a problem of that? Oh, what was she thinking, or she’d never see him again, or they would meet again and then she’d annoy him after a while or something like that. Wait, no, she just needed to stay away from him, maybe that was the best plan.

Or was she just thinking about him to find a way to get revenge on Loki, it would make his sneaky jealous mind go crazy. But that would be childish, extremely childish. She wasn’t together with Loki anymore and he slept around with whoever he wanted, even during their ‘relationship’. That, and she had been sleeping around for a while now, she didn’t need cocky Jason for that. And, where the fuck was Loki? She’d probably never see him again. Better get him out of her mind. Maybe Jason could help her with that. OR MAYBE HE COULDN’T. Yaël’s thoughts kept circling like that until she surrendered and waited for a cab to stop for her. She hadn’t even noticed that X had left her mind so she’d have some private freak out-time.

 

Yaël looked around when the cab stopped in front of the Compound. Okay, there were no cops around. She paid the driver and climbed out of the car. Once she got in her room, she immediately opened the box she pulled out from under her closet. Yaël put on the lab coat she had stolen from the dressing room few days ago in which the doctors, employees and scientists who checked on and worked with the prisoners who stayed in the compound, got changed.

She put her hair in a knot and pulled some sort of green, paper-ish cap over it, and put on some glasses, all of which she had also stolen. Being disguised, FRIDAY wouldn’t be alarmed that quickly. That, and she was probably focusing on Tony right now. Not that the AI wasn’t able to keep an eye on everything at once, right?

“Okay, focus Yaël,” she said to herself when she saw her reflection in the mirror of her closet before she closed its door. The guy-trouble wasn’t a priority right now. Heck, it will never be a priority. She opened her bedroom door carefully and peeked to see if Rhodey or Vision were walking around somewhere. Most of the time, they were in their room, but you’d never know.

Sneaking into the hallway, she walked towards the stairs do go downstairs. The AI still hadn’t noticed her when she was standing in front of the electronic card reader next to a blurred glass door. So far so good. She pulled the card she had ‘stolen’ from Jason in the card reader and waited for a signal. It took a little while as the machine needed to scan the realness of the card, so Yaël started to unconsciously scratch her hand again.

The little red light finally turned green and the glass door automatically slid open. Luckily all the employees had gone home already. Everything seemed to be made of glass, but Yaël wasn’t naive, she knew all of this was made of some sort of material that was unable to even crack. Just like the glass from the cage when she had been locked up. Yaël looked around while walking through a hallway, until she saw the familiar blonde hair behind of one of the ‘windows’.

Yaël couldn’t see her face as her sister was sitting on the ground, knees up with her face buried against them. Her arms were bound against her chest and her hair fell before her face, but Yaël was sure it was her. Their physiques looked quite the same, after all. Except for Nilla’s very visible muscles. She wasn’t wearing the sweater that made her look ‘cute’ anymore. Now, her kaki tank top and black leggings made Nilla look a lot more like herself.

Yaël felt sad, looking at her sister. She should’ve been there for her, like a real big sis. But on the other hand, Yaël was going to make the same dumb faults as Peter had made by visiting Harry in his cell. Maybe Yaël had no talent for being a responsible sister. Or maybe she needed to make her own mistakes too. But whilst Peter had a father and an aunt who’d catch him when he fell, she didn’t even have a big brother who was always there for her. Maybe Yaël felt a bit sick of being responsible, since she managed to fail at that every freaking time. She should’ve been the sister who braided Nilla’s hair, Yaël thought while softly touching the window, imagining the scene.

But this wasn’t her sister anymore, and that was not Yaël’s fault, she thought while putting the card against another reader. She stepped inside and looked at the girl in front of her who tilted her head. Nilla immediately smirked as she saw Yaël. Her hair was tangled and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“I knew you were coming,” she hummed happily. Yaël crossed her arms and kept a distance.

“We need to talk,” she answered.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All night I dream of water that can wash the weight of the world from my shoulders” Of Mice And Men - Purified

“Oh, what’s wrong, dear søster?” Nilla sounded even more crazy than before. Her wide grin didn’t help. But Yaël kept her arms crossed and leaned against the wall behind her.

“You know more, don’t you?” she asked Nilla.

“Oh, do I?” Nilla’s brown eyes grew big of joy. “And what exactly is it that I supposedly know more about?”

“I think the Queen has way more secrets that you know off.” Nilla’s smile grew even bigger.

“Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t!” Okay, this had been a bad idea. Right now, Yaël just wanted to kick Nilla’s perfect teeth out of her mouth. But she had a feeling that the Queen’s plans were shifty and were going to be harmful.

“Look, you’re stuck anyway. Why won’t you just tell me what going on there on that bloody planet?”

“You want to go return?” the woman giggled in her broken English.

“Never.” Yaël pushed herself away from the wall and turned towards the door. Useless, everything she had done to get here had been useless. What did she even expect to happen?

As her hand reached the handle, she heard her sister mumble: “Just like mom…” Yaël quickly faced back to her sister while her hand was still resting on the handle.

“What did you just say?”

“I said I like ponies.” Yaël took a step closer towards her sister and let go of the handle.

“What do you know about our mother?”

“ _Our_ mother? Are we _family_?” the girl looked innocently, like she didn’t know what Yaël was talking about. 

“Don’t play games, what do you know?” Yaël took another step closer and pointed at her sister. She was inwardly raging. Nilla tilted her head a bit.

“Oh, Agostina’s death was an interesting story. She was a traitor! Yes, her death was unavoidable.”

“She died during birth…” Yaël frowned.

“Oh, dear no! Do you still believe in fairytales?”

“What did she do?”

“She fought against the Queen in a big army of only women, joining the enemy of the royal family!” It got harder for Yaël to keep her anger to herself.

“Do I need to remind you that your dear beloved _Queen_ herself is an intruder to our planet. She isn’t Helvegian, God knows what she is!”

Yaël started making links. So, her mother probably got executed somehow. Well, if this psycho was telling the truth anyways.

“How- what did they do to her?”

Nilla shrugged. “Buried alive in the backyard of the castle, the usual way they deal with traitors.” The most disrespectful way to die on Helvegen. She got buried. Alive. Just like the King had almost done to Yaël. But why would he do that, if the Queen still needed Yaël? Or maybe the King wasn’t really informed about the Queen’s plans?

“This is crazy…” Yaël mumbled to herself. Did Cem, her dad, know that?

Nilla noticed that Yaël wasn’t paying attention, so she shuffled a bit closer. When Yaël looked up, she saw Nilla open her mouth in a very recognizable way. Yaël ducked and jumped away, towards the door as the flames surrounded her. Before she closed the door behind her, she heard her sister grumble and hiss. It was clear the woman wanted her dead. Yaël pulled out her card so the door got locked again. Then she noticed her lab coat’s sleeve was on fire around the shoulder.

“FUCK!” Yaël cursed loudly as she threw the coat on the floor and started stomping on it. Then she suddenly got attacked by a hard sting in her shoulder. Yaël hissed and turned around, but there was no one. So she touched her shoulder and noticed a piece of her clothing was burned away and the hole showed a red, sore, burned off piece of flesh with a few strings of the burned fabric sticking into it. Bloody hell, she just healed from the former wounds and within just a split-second, Nilla managed to damage Yaël again.

Hissing as she quickly put the coat on again, since she was still trying to keep FRIDAY unwarned, she walked out of the basement. She peeked around again, hoping that Rhodey and Vision were still busy doing whatever those two did. She walked to her room and put all the stuff, including the card and coat, back into the box and shoved it back under her closet.

After she pulled off the pants and other clothing, Yaël grabbed the fringe of her shirt. Oh, she was so not ready for this, but it was like ripping off a bandage, right? As quick as she could, she pulled her shirt over her head and threw it on the ground, biting in her fist not to scream out of pain. She leaned her forehead against the cold door, waiting until the stinging pain calmed a bit. This had been her worst idea ever.

She got in the shower, turned the water to some lukewarm temperature, which felt kind of cool to the rest of her skin, except for her burned shoulder. Yaël sat down and let the water stream over her.

Yaël must’ve been sitting there for quite a while when Vision suddenly walked through her wall.

“Yaël?”

“Vision, normal people don’t walk randomly into people’s bathrooms,” Yaël said without looking up or making the effort to cover herself.

“Sorry, but I have a question,” he said politely, like he didn’t really gasp why he shouldn’t just appear in her bathroom like that. Luckily, Yaël wasn’t a prude and she was used to Wade walking in whenever he wanted to too. Vision was clearly waiting for Yaël to react before he asked her his question.

“Hmm?” Yaël reacted so he’d go on. The water was still running over her.

“Colonel Rhodes and I, we were wondering why there were policemen ringing on the door?” Holy shit, really?! Were they so desperate to find drama that they went to the Avengers?

“I dunno, Vision. What does that have to do with me?” Yaël decided to play it cool.

“Well, they asked to speak to you, but you were, and still are, in the shower.”

“Are they coming back?” Yaël sighed.

“I think not. James asked them if someone filed a complaint against you, but there was no official accusation against you, so they left.” Yaël turned off the shower, stepped out and took a towel.

“Great,” she mumbled, feeling a bit grateful that Jason didn’t charge her.

“What’s that?” Vision pointed at her shoulder.

“It’s called a burning wound, Vision,” Yaël grumbled as she searched for something to put on burns.

“I think you have to disinfect it firstly,” he countered wisely when Yaël had finally found something to smear on her wound. Oh, great, so now she had to search for a disinfectant too. Before she could even open one of the cabinets, Vision already pulled the bottle out one of the drawers, like he knew where it was in forehand.

But because it was Vision, Yaël didn’t ask any questions.

“Shall I help you?”

Yaël wanted to bite back that she could do it on her own, but she knew she couldn’t and Vision surely didn’t deserve her bitchy answers. So she tried to calm down a bit, but the wound hurt like hell, and nodded.

“Tell me, are you in trouble?” he asked.

“No,” Yaël grunted shortly while fighting back screams and tears as Vision was cleaning her wound. Then he calmly pulled the tube from her hand and started smearing the crème on her wound.

“I propose we don’t train tonight,” he patched her up with some bandages.

“Sure, thanks…” Yaël answered, then she turned to him. “Look, Vision, I would appreciate it a lot if you wouldn’t tell anyone about the wound. It would alarm them and that’s really not necessary.” He stared at her for a moment, then nodded, turned around and left her room again by going through the wall.

 

* * *

 

 

The Avengers came back after three days, but something didn’t feel right. Yaël heard rumors of Wanda making a big mistake during the mission. The maidens whispered while cleaning the halls that something bad was happening, saying that the girl should get locked up as a wild animal.

Now, that shocked Yaël. Hell, it even stressed her out. She knew what it felt like to be looked at like being a beast instead of a person. The girl wasn’t allowed to leave the compound anymore, like a teen that got grounded. It was clear that Wanda didn’t want to talk about it, so Yaël supported her in small ways, like whispering to her she should keep her back straight when they crossed each other in the hallways or playing chess together in Wanda’s bedroom. Wanda knew that Yaël sympathized enormously with her.

When Yaël finally got the chance to talk to Steve, he was acting very strange. The man, that always seemed to have his shit together, except his Tony-shit, was losing it.

“What’s going on?” Yaël asked him while they were both sitting in the sofa’s in front of the window in her bedroom.

“The Avengers are falling apart, Yaël. They’re taking away our freedom, trying to make us a governmental pawn,” even though he always had a calm-looking appearance, Yaël could feel his frustration radiate.

“I don’t get it, why is that such a big problem?” she asked him. That was clearly the wrong question to ask, as he looked at her and frowned in disbelief.

“Okay, let me put it this way: people like Wanda and you, you’d be put on a leash and they’d only free you if it was highly necessary.” It was quiet for a little moment, as Yaël was thinking about what her friend just told her. Okay, no, that didn’t sound good at all.

“And Stark?” If Yaël’s previous question had already been a bad one, this one seemed to be even worse.

“Tony doesn’t get it…” he grumbled while staring out of the window.

“Wha-“

“He thinks it’s a good idea, that this new… _system_ would _protect_ us and humanity.”

 

Yaël got visited by Vision again, but this time she asked him to leave her bedroom after he broke the news to her that she should stay inside for a little while, just like Wanda. This time, she wasn’t stuck in a glass cage, but the compound felt like a cage anyways after Vision’s words.

“What?! Why?” she didn’t get it, what did she do wrong?

“They have noticed that you get a lot of media-attention, in a very bad way. And you using your powers started freaking people out since they haven’t forgotten what had happened during the Chitauri attack, Yaël.”

“WHY DOESN’T STARK HAVE THE GUTS TO COME AND TELL ME THIS HIMSELF?!” Vision stayed admirable calm, which triggered Yaël even more.

“This wasn’t his idea, Yaël. The UN made this decision.”

“Sure, because Stark certainly did something about it. He probably nodded like the good boy he is. You know what, just leave, Vision.”

After this, things went very quickly. Yaël had the feeling she was living in a haze. Well, everyone was. Nobody even questioned why she stopped training for a week as she quickly noticed that training with a burned shoulder wasn’t a good match. Her wound split open again with every move she made with her arm. Luckily, she wasn’t too stubborn to contact Dr. Cho again, who fixed the wound very quickly. This time with the use of the synthetic skin, since Clint made it very obvious he had been joking before about the skin being itchy.

The, suddenly one day, Tony’s aunt passed away and Peter, Tony and Steve had to go to the funeral. Apparently she had been a good friend (or girlfriend? She’s not sure what she heard) of Steve too. Afterwards, Yaël heard that Steve and Tony hadn’t even talked during the funeral. Heck, they hadn’t even been sitting near to each other. So, yes, Yaël felt things were going from bad to even worse.

 

* * *

 

 

At a certain point, someone had the genius idea to do certain activities to keep Wanda and Yaël occupied and distract them a bit, like doing a Tolkien-marathon, swimming and… playing a game of laser tag in the compound. Peter came to the compound more often now after he heard Wanda was kind of grounded. Yaël didn’t even tell Peter she was grounded too, she was still grumpy about it. That and Nilla was still taking over her mind, so Yaël forgot to talk about quite a lot.

After the game of laser tag with Wanda, Peter and Vision (who, according to Yaël, had been cheating since he can walk through walls and so randomly appear to shoot at someone), they all went to the living room.

“Have you heard from Stark?” Wanda asked Peter before she sat down in the couch.

“Yeah, he, uh… I don’t know, he doesn’t seem to be doing so well,” Peter told her. Yaël wasn’t really following, she felt like it was none of her business.

“How could you tell?”

Yaël didn’t hear or see Peter’s reaction. The only thing she could think of, was that she’d give a million dollars to go play Requiem For A Dream on the streets right now. But she couldn’t, because she didn’t have a cello in the compound and she wasn’t free to go to Charles whenever she wanted. Hell, someone even arranged her a driver to bring her to school and back at the exact time her classes were over, so she didn’t even have the time to talk to Charles or practice the cello.

 “So, uh, these accords. I heard you signed them, Vision?” Peter asks. Yaël looked up. Did he, now?

“Yes, it was the logical thing to do,” Vision responded casually. And like usually, Vision turned to Wanda and they started staring in each other eyes. If Yaël could puke on command, she’d do it. But she kept her bitter mouth shut. Well, at least, these two had found each other in these shitty times.

“How’s your view on them?” Wanda asked Peter. Oh, she should not have asked that.

“These accords suck, that is what they do,” Yaël muttered before thinking about it. Wow, she interrupted Peter and sounded as bitter as an old, grumpy man. She’d better go and take a walk around the city.

IF THAT WAS POSSIBLE.

“You don’t agree with them?” Vision asked, looking a bit surprised. How could he even be surprised? It’s not like Yaël felt blessed by those bloody accords. She looked away for a second, trying her best not to start crying. She was acting childish, butthurt, she knew that, but she couldn’t help it. She was sick of looking at the inside of this building. And, yes, of course she was grateful that Peter came visit her and Wanda frequently, but it was hard to show that, given the circumstances.

“I can understand why they’re here, but I think it would have been better if they hadn’t been made. There’s so much shit going on now, and we can’t even help out…” That was true. Somewhere, Yaël did understand why Stark and the others signed the accords. Just like Vision said, it was the logical thing to do. “Wouldn’t you be a victim of them as well?” Wanda hinted to make clear that Yaël should tell Peter she was already affected by the accords.

But Yaël didn’t want Peter’s pity. Hell, she just wanted to be gone from here.

“It’s not like I’m on the field, anyway…” That was what bothered her the most. She wasn’t even an Avenger, she was nothing but a freaking mosquito who accidentally got stuck in the maze called the accords. “The only reason I wouldn’t sign is because Steve isn’t.” She should chose her words more carefully with topics like these, because immidiatly after she said that, everyone looked at her a bit strangely. Great.

Peter cocked his eyebrow at her, but kept his mouth shut. But it was Vision who started speaking with disapproval. “You shouldn’t make a decision based on what others do.”

“Look, it’s not like I’m part of the team anyway. I don’t have to sign _anything_. As far as these people are concerned, I don’t even exist,” Yaël muttered while rubbing her eyes. But if she didn’t exist, then why did the UN decide to put her on lockdown too?

“And we’re both here illegally,” Wanda mutters out. Yaël, who was sick of the conversation, put on a Harry Potter movie, just so everybody would shut up about it.

She hadn’t seen Steve nor Sam in a few days and she wondered where they were. All the others seemed to be busy, probably searching those two. But nobody kept Yaël up to date, so what did she know except for that she really wanted wished she was in Hogwarts right now.

Peter left after the movie, and Yaël didn’t really feel like being a third wheel to Wanda and Vision, so she stood up too. Before she closed the door behind her, Wanda threw her a concerned look, but Yaël ignored it. She didn’t feel like going back to her bedroom, so instead, she went to the roof. She needed some air. It saddened her, but she knew that if she’d stay inside that building for much longer, she’d set it on fire or hurt someone with her bitter words.

 

* * *

 

 

Only a few days later, Yaël received a phone call from Steve.

“How are you? I’ve been worried as hell! You can’t just disappear like that!” she ranted against him.

“ _Look, Yaël, could you please make sure nobody know I contacted you?”_ Uh, that didn’t sound so good. But Yaël nodded, too confused to realize that Steve wasn’t able to see that through the phone.

“Where are you?”

_“In Germany.”_

“Why on earth-“

“ _Look_ ,” Steve interrupted her, he sounded rushed. “ _I need your help_.”

“Wha- why?” Yaël didn’t understand, what was going on?

_“The problems have built up, I predict, no, I know there’s going to be a fight.”_

“N-no-“ Yaël couldn’t grasp what Steve was trying to tell her. Weren’t they the Avengers, Earth’s mightiest heroes? Okay, there were problems, but Yaël didn’t expect them to actually start fighting each other.

“ _Yes, and I need you to join me-“_

Join him, as in, fighting against the other Avengers?

“ _I don’t really want to ask this, but I really need you_.” Sure, Yaël didn’t like the accords either, but this wasn’t completely her problem, was it? She’d never be an Avenger, she just got locked up during the process, but they’d free her again afterwards, right?

“I-I don’t know, Steve…” she said, hoping he’d understand.

But he didn’t. “ _Yaël, this is your duty too! You can’t just abandon us, you need to fight against this! Do you like being put in a cage?”_ He sounded a bit aggressive, which made Yaël only wanted to back off more. This wasn’t her friend talking to her.

“No, I don’t, but I don’t like fighting for something like this, either. Can’t you just talk to the others? You’re God gave you a mouth so you’d solve problems in a more civilized way, Steve,” Yaël hissed. Oh, how Yaël hoped nobody was going to ask Peter, well, Spider-Man, to help in the fight. And if someone did, she surely whished the boy would use his common sense and keep himself out of this exploding situation.

“ _I’m really disappointed in you, Yaël_ ,” Steve said shortly right before he hung up, leaving Yaël with tears of guilt in her eyes. She had just forsaken the man that always took care of her, helped her out, by declining to help him. 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All you do is make me feel exactly what you are, you make me sick!” You make me sick- Of Mice and Men

Yaël immediately jumped out of the shower when she heard the blow. She climbed in some clothes and sprinted to the place where the noises came from. There he stood, shaking as he was staring at the hole in the ground.

“What the hell happened, Vision?” Yaël asked down the gigantic hole through the floors of the building. That looks expensive enough to fix…

“Clint took her…” he mumbled, without looking up.

“Holy-“ Yaël growled while fishing her phone out of her pocket. This was it, the last drip. Wanda somehow found a way to escape and Vision probably didn’t dare to fight against her. Yaël scrolled through her phone and dialed the number she had been looking for. But her thoughts wandered off. Now that Wanda was gone, it was time for her to leave too. And Wanda probably escaped to go and help Steve, but Yaël was sick of that whole fight.

“ _Yeah_?” Peter’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts. Why was she suddenly walking back to her room?

“Peter? Are you alright?” Yaël was worried. Her group of friends was falling apart, but maybe Peter wanted to join her and just leave all of this behind. She knew he had a hard time being in the middle of Tony and Steve’s fight.

“ _Uh, yeah, I’m fine. What’s up?_ ” He sounded a bit weird.

“Wanda’s gone _,”_ Yaël started throwing stuff in a suitcase, deciding not to tell Peter about Steve’s phonecall. 

“ _What do you mean, she’s gone?_ ”

“I don’t know, I was in the shower, but when I came back there was a huge hole in the building. Vision’s really shaken, saying that Clint took her. _”_ Stupid tears in her stupid eyes. Firstly, she had left Steve in the dark and now Wanda had disappeared.

“ _What the hell? How can anybody get the better of him? Isn’t he, like, the most powerful of us all?_ ”

“Do you really think Vision would fight back against Wanda? Anyway, where are you?” If he was around, she’d be able to pick him up and take him with her, if he wanted to.

“ _Uh, in an airplane, about to leave,_ ” he said vaguely.

Plane…What the hell?! “Wait, are you going to Berlin?”

“ _Yes, why?”_

Did he really think she was that dumb? “You’re going to help Stark, aren’t you?”

“ _He asked._ ” Was the only answer she got back. No explanation, nothing.

“Are you even there as Peter?”

“… _no,”_ Peter admitted. Yaël sighed.

“Holy crap, Peter, you’re in deep shit here, _”_ she told him. But this was exactly what she tried to avoid by declining Steve’s demand. At least, she didn’t have to fight Peter, right? Now, someone else could hurt him, without knowing it was Peter. What if he died, and the others found out that Spider-Man was Peter all this time. Was this what the stone was trying to warn her about, back when her powers imploded?

“ _I need to hang up now. I’ll keep you posted. You stay out of trouble_?”

“Look who’s talking,” she tried to sound like she wasn’t crying. This could be the kid’s deathbed, and she wasn’t going to be around to help him. How could she? Yaël was upset, immediately imagining the boy’s funeral. Maybe she should just go to Berlin too, trying to stop the whole fight.

But she literally couldn’t, she felt more worthless than ever. Her powers didn’t save anyone, but it ruined cities. There was nothing she could do to help these people. People would always hurt other people. Yaël was never going to be a hero, not with her shifty powers and not with her bad decisions.

 

* * *

 

 

Yaël picked up her suitcase and left her bedroom, her safe-space, which Steve had arranged specially for her. It stung, and for a moment, Yaël wished she could still feel the pain of her shoulder, just so it would distract her from this emotional moment. She put her backpack on her back and pulled her suitcase behind her. As she took the stairs, she shortly lifted it from the ground. For a moment, she looked at the blurred glass door in front of her. Then she put her stuff in a corner for a moment and pulled the card from a side pocket of her backpack. She let it scan in the card-reader and waited until the light turned green. This time, she wasn’t wearing a disguise or anything, so she’d only have a few minutes until FRIDAY would discover what she was doing.

The lights on the ceiling of the passage flashed in the windows of the cells as Yaël walked passed them. Again, Yaël scanned her card and waited for the light to turn green.

She might not be a good friend, heck, the worst friend ever, instead… but she was going to show Nilla that she could be a good sister.

“Nilla,” Yaël greeted her sister while opening the door.

“Oh, are you back again?” Nilla asked. She was sitting in a dark corner, arms bound to her chest, glaring at her blue and purple haired sister. Nilla didn’t seem as happy as the last time Yaël had seen her. The circles under her eyes seemed to be even darker.

“Yes, and I’m here to propose something.” Nilla didn’t react, so Yaël continued. “Let’s start over, like completely. You stop being like… this… and I start to be there for you as a real sister.”

Nilla cocked her eyebrow. “How do you plan on doing that?”

Yaël smirked. “Let’s move to another country.” Nilla looked a bit surprised, and then burst into laughter.

“S-so, what country do you want to move to?” she hiccupped from laughing.

“Somewhere where we’ll both feel at home: Norway.” Nilla’s laughter stopped. Instead, she stared at Yaël in disbelief.

“Really?” she whispered.

“Yeah…” Yaël leaned against the door. This was going well!

“So you’re planning on just walking out of here, right now-“

“Yes-“

“And you expect me to believe you’re going to forgive me and be my sweet, big sister?” Nilla spat, her tone suddenly completely changed from unbelieving into extremely sarcastic. Pushing her back up against the wall, Nilla got up. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been combed in years and her eyes glanced dangerously at Yaël, like she was some sort of prey.

Okay, this wasn’t going well.

“You ask me to forget the Queen and her mission and follow you blindly, but I’m no sheep and you’re no Sheppard,” Nilla hissed.

“That’s not what I mea-“

“The Kingdom is my family, you’re just an ant and I can crush you in no time.”

“I honestly don’t even doubt that,” Yaël answered dryly. “You don’t want to be free and erase all your mistakes? Fine! This was your one and only chance to get out and you blew it.”

“None of this is my mistake!” Yaël saw fury flash through Nilla’s eyes and already put herself in a defensive position, ready for the fire. Right when Nilla moved her leg to steer fire, Yaël already blocked it with water she pulled from the sink.

“You forget you’re tired and malnourished, dear sister,” Yaël said with an emotionless face. Nilla screamed, making a cry that almost sounded unnatural, and tried again to attack Yaël. But Yaël kept calm and blocked every blow that came her way.

In between the blows, Yaël managed to open the door.

“At least I tried. I hope you can forgive yourself one day for making this bad decision.” Yaël quickly pulled the door shut behind her when another blow of fire smacked against the wall next to her. She could hear her sister yell and scream through the hallway.

“ _Miss Yaël, may I ask you what you think you’re doing?_ ” FRIDAY made Yaël jump while she was pulling the card out of the scanner, so the door got locked again.

“Visiting someone,” she answered dryly while walking to the exit. When she wanted to scan the card to get out, she got a red light. “Fuck!” she grumbled.

_“I’m informing Mr. Stark about this.”_

“Great, yes, do that!” Yaël threw her arms in the air. What would happen? Would he keep her locked up in the basement for a few hours? That man was probably very busy with that freaking fight in Germany. “Look, FRIDAY, honey, I just want to go.”

She still could hear Nilla’s screams echoing. Suddenly the light went green and the automatic door opened. Yaël looked surprised, did Stark just help her out? But Yaël just stepped outside and took her stuff back out of the corner. The automatic door locked itself behind her.

Yaël walked, for a last time, back to her bedroom. There she put a post-it on her night table with the words “Gonna see the world” on it.

“ _You’re taxi has arrived_ ,” FRIDAY noted. Yaël sighed.

“Thanks, FRI.”

As soon as Yaël walked outside, a loud siren went off and red light started flashing around the building.

 _“Alert: prisoner wounded_ ,” FRIDAY’s voice echoed over the domain as she kept repeating those words. Before Yaël even had the chance to drop her stuff and run back inside, FRIDAY’s words changed. “ _Alert: prisoner down. I repeat: prisoner down_.” Inside, Yaël literally ran into Vision, who looked at her with pure shock in his eyes.

“My sister- she-there-“ Yaël sounded out of breath caused by panic. It didn’t take Vision that long to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

“No,” he said as he grabbed her shoulder and pushed her softly away. “Don’t let this hold you back. Do whatever you feel like you need to do, she’s already gone. Besides, your cab has arrived,” he said calmly.

“But-“

“Yaël, she blew herself into pieces, I’m sorry I have to put it like this, but you have to leave.” It was her fault, she had made Nilla mad like that and so the girl probably started steering too much fire in a fireproof cell. Nilla probably baked herself to death. Had it been an accident, or did she do it on purpose?

When Vision noticed Yaël was still doubting to just run back to the basement, he told her once more to go, then turned around and disappeared in the red alarming flashlights. Out of utter frustration and anger, Yaël stomped her foot and yelled, which caused the scenery around the compound to crack open and create deep, long tears in the ground here and there. With a fierce grunt, Yaël pulled open the door of the taxi and right when she slammed it shut behind her, rain started pouring down.

She didn’t really have it under control and wasn’t really doing anything to stop it. While the cabdriver turned the car around, Yaël looked at the compound, with the grounds around it all cracked up, the lights of the alarm still flashing through the gushing rain.

_You’re going to destroy the city if you don’t get your act together._

Oh, please, Yaël reacted bitterly in her mind. But Charles was right, she really didn’t need to destroy the city once again. So she breathed in deeply and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the cab driver, who actually looked scared as hell, pulled over at the cab at the airport. Yaël threw the door of the car open, took her stuff and got out, to be greeted by young Charles.

“We can talk like this, everyone can see me,” he said while following her inside. She looked at the timetables.

“You know, Charles, I blew up my sister AND I actually thought Steve was my friend, sick times” she mumbled as she searched for her flightnumber.

“He still is, right?”

“I don’t know, I have the feeling I’m fucking everything up. First Peter, now Steve… Let’s not forget Nilla.” Yaël pulled her suitcase behind her, towards the right alley where she had to wait in the queue.

She sighed and looked at Charles.

“I’m sorry you have to search for a new teacher now, Charlie.” He shrugged with a grin on his face

“I’ll ask Logan.”

“Yeah, he’ll like to do that!” Yaël threw a forced smile back.

“Now, don’t feel guilty,” X said while pulling her in a sideway hug. “I understand why you leave.”

“It’ll just be for a few weeks,” Yaël mumbled.

 

* * *

 

 

_Wait a minute, what do you think you're doing? Don't look at each other like that, you know I'm talking to you two, Caspinn and Neoklak-or whatever your names are. Who's on the line right now?_

Ehh, Caspinn... what's the problem, Deadpool?

_You're moving my friend to another country, I mean, is this how you want to end this story?_

It's not the end, actually...

_Oh... uh, well, make it less depressing asap, please. I mean, come on, do you get a kick from torturing your own characters like that?_

N-no, not at-

_Hush, your opinion isn’t important. Do something about this depressing shit, man!_

I'm a woman.

_Whatever the fuck of mythical creature you are, fix this!_

I can't just... I need to solve the problems first before I can make her happy again. Otherwise I create plotholes! Do you know how hard it is to fix those? No you don't, because you don't think about that, do you?

_Oh, Jeez, you're a grumpy ass woman._

Look... I get that this frustrates you, hell it's no fun for me to make such a soup of Yaël's life either. I'll fix it later, I promise.

_How long will that take?_

I don't know... just hang on, okay?

_Fine! By the way, why wasn't I at the airport to say goodbye to her? I'm not such a big dick! Not that that's comparable with the size of my own-_

Okay! That's enough! God knows what the hell you're doing and where you are.

  _I'm currently robbing an ice-cream store._

What, why? No you know what, don't tell me. Can you now stop breaking the fourth wall, please?

_As you wish._


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by: Wardruna -Solringen

Little lights twinkled everywhere around her as Yaël saw her mom dance in circles on an open, grassy spot in the forest. The lights were insects, like fireflies, but the species on Helvegen shone out way more colors, like blue, soft pink and purple, which reflected beautifully in her one brown and one grey eye. Unlike the armor-ish stuff or pants she usually wore, her mom was wearing a long, flowy, white dress. Agostina was humming a song. She had told Yaël long ago that it was about the sun.

Suddenly, Yaël saw a little kid appear, running playfully after her mom. The girl was also wearing a white dress and had flowers braided in her hair. The dark-brown, wavy hair of her mom and the kid looked exactly the same. Of course, the girl was toddler-Yaël herself. Agostina turned around and smiled at her daughter. Little Yaël fiddled a bit with the flowy skirt of her mother as her mom crouched to get to her daughter’s eye-level.

Yaël put her hand on her mom’s obvious baby bump and stroked it like it was a cat or something. Agostina snickered and lifted her little girl into her arms. Her mom asked her what she’d think of becoming a big sister and Yaël reacted by giving her mom the biggest, proudest grin she had.

 

* * *

 

 

Yaël woke up in her tent, which colored red by the sunlight… as usual. After wandering around in Oslo for a little while, she decided to buy a tent and some camping gear, so she’d be able to go wherever she wanted to. When she firstly arrived at the Lofoten Islands, she had cursed that poor life’s decision as the summer was the time of the year when the sun apparently didn’t go down around the Lofoten Islands. So the first few days, Yaël had to get used to fall asleep while the sunlight was still lightening her tent.

She zipped open the tent and climbed out.

“Good morning, Værøy,” Yaël mumbled while stretching her back, looking at the waves that were splashing against the rocks. For a moment, she just stood there, looking at the sea. Somewhere far away, a group filled with pieces of shit was fighting each other.

Or maybe they were done, maybe they were friends again and maybe Yaël had to call Peter to check if he was still alive. That last thought had flashed many times in her head, but she was terrified of Peter being dead because she knew that would be on her. She should’ve warned everyone instead of fleeing.

Luckily, Peter had given her some sort of signal by trying to call her. Heck, Steve had tried to call her a few times since she left too, but for some reason, she never felt like picking up the phone. Yaël didn’t really understand why she didn’t want to. Sometimes, she felt like she was mad at Steve for causing this huge fight. But other times she felt like the islands were a cocoon, like nothing was important enough to disturb her. Like nothing else except the rocks, the sea and her existed.

Of course there were moments when Yaël missed Peter, Wade (who, somehow, must’ve had the no-calling-memo, because he never even tried to reach her), Wanda, Charles and Steve. Quite often, she felt guilty for running off like that, like a little brat. These were the times when she wrote letters to them on the back of the photos or on postcards she bought during her trip. She’d never send them, though; because where the heck would everybody live after the whole civil-war-shitshow?!

Then she shook her head, trying to make the thoughts disappear, and yawned as she pottered the poorly folded, wrinkly, ragged map out of her pocket. A seagull landed next to her feet.

“Okay, so today I want to see the Viking cemetery,” Yaël muttered against the bird while staring at the map, following the lines with her finger, “So… I need to go north!” The seagull looked at her like he was waiting for her to throw some bread at him, but instead, she walked passed him, starting to roll up her sleeping bag.

Once she had tidied most of her stuff, she sat down on her sleeping bag and searched for some food in her backpack. The only still edible thing she had was some rice pudding, so rice pudding it was!

The sound of footsteps interrupted Yaël’s humming as she ripped the plastic off. She looked up and saw an old man with an eyepatch walking up the hill. He didn’t notice her as she was a bit further away from him. She also had put her camp behind a rock, so she was a bit tucked away, you know, for privacy reasons. The man looked peaceful as he walked towards the edge and stared at the sea.

Yaël smiled and turned back to her rice pudding. Just when she wanted to put the first spoon of her breakfast in her mouth, she suddenly heard a whooshing sound and a grunt, which made her jump up. Oh, Goddamn, she surely hoped the man wouldn’t jump off the cliff or anything, he looked so peaceful!

She hid behind the rock and... saw something that made Yaël drop her pudding out of shock. Holy shit, the black hair and slim built, she’d recognize it anywhere. As soon as Yaël recognized Loki, with who must probably be Thor walking by his side, she sat down again and hid behind the rocks. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried her best to remember the blonde guy. “ _You?”_ Thor’s laugh rumbled in her head “ _You’re just one of Loki’s toys!_ ” Yaël instantly rolled her eyes as she opened them. Yup, that was Thor alright.

Had Loki been looking for her? Why was he here? Yaël stared through a slit in the stones while rapidly packing her stuff. Loki and Thor walked towards the old man and each stood by his side, Loki with some hesitance, also looking at the sea for a little moment. Maybe Loki wasn’t here for her, maybe Yaël was just here with unfortunate timing.

They talked a bit and then sat down on a few rocks behind them. Yaël couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she simply couldn’t look away. She hadn’t seen him in real life for such a long time... Did his hair actually grow even longer?

Suddenly, the old man lit up and turned into glowing dust, flying towards the sea. Yaël’s mouth fell open, did that dude just die? How? Wait a minute, she didn’t see Loki using any tricks to make the old man turn to dust. Maybe this man hadn’t been human at all...  Was this the Odin Loki used to tell her about? He surely could be, Yaël thought, suddenly noticing how much Thor looked like him.

Was that the reason why he had been hesitant to join his brother and father? Yaël knew that Loki’s relationship with Odin had been complicated. Maybe the two brothers came here to say their last farewells to their father. She didn’t know how Asgardians handled stuff like death.

Yaël looked up after hearing the clouds rumble. Something didn’t feel right. The sky suddenly looked and felt very sinister. It was time for Yaël to move, but right when she wanted to stand up and leave, some sort of green and black spot formed right behind the two brothers. It grew bigger and bigger, it almost looked fluid, like oil, as it licked the air while growing without blending in. Thor and Loki seemed to immediately grasp what was happening, because, with just one tap against the ground with his umbrella Thor changed from a normal-clothed guy to a god in full armour. Loki, too, changed from his extremely flattering, no, scratch that, that man didn’t have the right to be called handsome, suit to his typical clothing. The green-blackish cloud-thing must’ve been some sort of portal, Yaël noticed, as a woman stepped out of it. Well, if you’d call that a woman, she surely looked more like some sort of witch.

They all came a bit closer, so Yaël could finally hear what they were saying.

“You must be Hela,” Thor said .“I’m Thor, son of Odin.”

“Really?” she said with a flair of arrogance, looking down at the two brothers like they were two puny ants “You don’t look like him.”

“Maybe we can come to an arrangement,” Loki asked Hela, while staring at her with suspicion. It was weird to hear his voice. She had heard him in her dreams, but that hadn’t been reality.

“You sound like him,” the smirk never left her face. “Kneel!” Oh, and that was something she shouldn’t demand from Loki, whom reacted like Yaël could’ve predict.

“Beg your pardon?!” he said, looking insulted. Out of the blue, with just a simple hand gesture, Hela was holding some sort of sword.

“Before your queen,” Hela added. Yaël bit her lip, when was the right moment to leave? Maybe it was a better plan to make sure they didn’t notice her and stay put.

“I didn’t think so,” Thor answered right before he threw his hammer at her. But somehow she grabbed it in full flight and smirked at him. “This is not possible,” Thor said confusedly.

“Darling, you have no idea what’s possible,” Hela answered right before the thing crumbled in her hand. She looked at them dangerously. Oh, she was so going to kill them. Yaël stood up and stared over the rock so she could see, still hiding herself as good as possible. Maybe she could freeze the woman, a surprise attack could work out, right? Not that she wanted to help Loki, but something was off with this woman.

But as soon as she could fully see the woman, she froze. 

The black, wet looking hair, the chalk-colour skin, the dark circles under her eyes... Yaël had a flashback to the Throne Room of Helvegen, to one of the paintings hanging above the throne. Yaël forgot to hide for a second.

“Queen Völuspá,” she whispered to herself, almost inaudible.  How the freaking heck did the Queen get here and why were they calling her Hela? Was this the plan Nilla had been talking about? Usually, thinking about Nilla stung, but Yaël was too distracted to feel it. Loki looked up and stared Yaël in the eyes for just a split-second, obviously immediately recognizing her. Shit, she blew her cover.

In the blink of an eye, a beam of light shone down from the sky. Thor made clear that Loki had done that too early as the beam suddenly sucked up the two boys. Hela simply disappeared, so Yaël finally stood up and stared at the beam that seemed to get closer to her.

Before Yaël could turn around to sprint away, she got sucked into it immediately closing her eyes as the light was too bright. Maybe this was what dying looked like. Once she dared to open her eyes again, she noticed she was flying through space. Bright colors were surrounding her, seemingly coming out from nowhere. But she didn’t have the time to really look around as she suddenly, as quick as she got sucked into the beam, got spit out again. Yaël screamed while falling down a few metres, and as she crashed against what looked like a pile of iron garbage she blacked out by the shock.

The stank made Yaël open her eyes again. She noticed she was surrounded by broken planes and other junk as she tried to get up. Where the hell was she? The cuts she got from the crash stung, but once more Yaël’s body proved that she wasn’t going to die that easily.

“Thanks, stone,” she mumbled to herself while limping down the pile.

“Wow, you survived that?” Yaël jumped as someone suddenly sneaked towards her from behind. She rapidly turned around and saw what seemed to be a drunk woman in full armour holding some sort of gun, aiming at Yaël. Wherever she stranded, this didn’t seem to be a nice, kind place.

“What do you want?” Yaël asked grumpily.

“You. You survived that fall. That makes you quite a worthy candidate,” the woman said while walking around Yaël, looking at her from every angle. “You don’t have much muscle though, so they’ll probably put you in first rank or something.”

“What are you talking about? Nobody is going to put me anywhere!” Come on, she went to Norway to have a peaceful vacation, away from all the fighting and stuff and then she ends up here. The woman chuckled and shot something at her, too quick for Yaël, who was still feeling a bit fuzzy, to dodge. Yaël cursed and grabbed her neck. At the spot where the woman had shot her, was a device planted in her skin.

Yaël tried to pull it off, but it was stuck.

“What is that?!” Yaël grunted at the woman, who only grinned, right before she pushed some kind of button which clearly send electric waves at Yaël as she out of the blue got electrocuted. She fell down on the ground, her body shocked and the pain was so unbearable that Yaël was unable to even yell or scream.

“Welcome to Sakaar!” was the last thing Yaël heard the woman say.

She woke up in a metal hallway that seemed to be donut-shaped. With a grunt, Yaël rubbed her head. Jesus Christ, how many times was she going to get knocked out again? And where the hell was she?

“Hello.”

Yaël almost jumped up. She hadn’t noticed there had been sitting some kind of living rock next to her this whole time. “My name is Korg, I’m kind of the leader in here and I’m made of rocks, like you can see... But don’t let that intimidate you! Oh, and this is my friend Miek, he has knives for hands,” the rock, Korg, said, not sounding intimidating at all, while pointing at a small purple creature he was holding, oblivious to Yaël’s shock.

“Hi,” Yaël huffed. “Uh, can you just please tell me where I am and how I get out again?” “Oh, you didn’t get the Grandmaster-intro? You must be low rated then.” Was she supposed to be insulted by that?

“What do you mean?” she asked instead while getting up and looking around for some kind of exit or window. Korg followed her while he was chattering. “Well, you’re a gladiator now, just like I am, and you’re purpose here is, uh... being a gladiator.”

“What does that even mean?” Yaël cocked her eyebrow “Am I still on earth?”

“No, you’re on Sakaar now and your purpose now is being a source of painful amusement to the Grandmaster.”

“Don’t I choose my purpose myself?” she grumbled while touching the metal walls.

“Oh, no, not on Sakaar, at least. You just fight here and try not to die,” he said like that was an extremely normal situation. At some point, Yaël noticed she came back to the exact same point where they started walking, without her even noticing she had been walking in circles.

“And what if I don’t want to do that?”

“It’s that or certain death,” Korg shrugged.

Yaël sighed and sat down again, there was clearly no use in trying to get out of this creepy hallway. “So tell me, how did you end up in here?” she asked as she had nothing else to do.

“I tried starting a revolution, but I didn’t have enough pamphlets, so I guess that’s why I didn’t succeed because nobody came...Do you maybe care to join me and help me make more pamphlets?”

Before Yaël could even react to his question, a darker piece of the metal walls, that seemed to be the door, flew open. Two enormous guys looked at her, one of them smirked as he said: “Time for round one, little girl.”

“Korg and Miek, you stay here, you’re in for the next round,” the other added. Without even giving Yaël the chance to protest, one of the two grabbed her arms and tilted her over his shoulder. Yaël grunted and slapped the guard in his face, who simply punched her back in full force. Great, Yaël was going to start this arena fight with an already blooded face.

They put her down in a sort of chair that immediately kept her chained, as an old man came to her with a scissor-looking machine in his hands. No...THE SCISSOR-MACHINE WAS HIS HAND! 

“Wait, what the hell are you going to do with that?” Yaël nodded at the machine.

“Just sit still, my hands aren’t as steady as they used to be!”

“You are _so_ not going to cut my hair!” Yaël barked at the old man, who, as a response to Yaël’s aggressive behaviour, started up the machine by pushing some buttons on it. He laughed as there came even more scissors and shaving machines out of the thing, moving around like they were going to murder Yaël, instead of cutting her hair.

“Oh, what a nice trick” Yaël hissed. “Lucky for you, I have a few nice tricks too!” And with a blink a her eyes, she made it happen. The guards and the old freak looked down confusedly as their feet started freezing.

“Wait, what are you doing?!” the old man panicked as the freezing reached his fingers and made them unmovable. It happened so quick that they didn’t even had the chance to handle against it. Once they were fully frozen and unable to move, Yaël tapped some left over, unfrozen, fluid from one of the guards body and used it to freeze her chains. But she didn’t have enough time as others had heard weird noises and came to check on what was happening.

Another angry guard tilted her out of the chair and roughly dragged her towards the weapon section. She tried to scratch his hand open, but the man dropped her dryly and told her to choose one weapon.

As soon as she picked out some okay-looking sword, he didn’t give her another chance to let her think about her decision and pushed her into the arena. Many lights shone onto her, and almost blinded her. The only thing she could see and hear were the audience, which had to be many, many people, or, uh, creatures.

“ _Ladies and gentlemen_ ,” suddenly an enormous holographic man appeared right above her.

“What the...” Yaël mumbled while looking at it. This was some freaky planet, man.

“ _May I repeat again this is still round one. The main event starts after a few rounds with a new candidate who’ll be fighting against our favourite champion_!” The man was wearing blue, red and gold garments, had blue lines under his eyes and one running over his chin.

“ _Now, uh, here’s some girl fighting some guy whom I both haven’t given names just yet because they’re new and nobody knows how long they will survive!”_ the holograph said happily. The audience went nuts as Yaël suddenly heard something creak open. On the other side of the arena, her opponent, a big muscular guy, carrying a long, shiny word with a purple skin colour walked in. Yaël looked down at her own rusty sword.

“Oh, come on!” she let out, throwing her arms in the air. She was surprised to see the man immediately storming towards her and before she could regain herself, the man already jumped onto her, punching her right in the face, already pointing his sword towards her neck. This was so not going well! She put her hand on his shoulder, just to check his body warmth, and then grinned widely.

She retracted the warmth from his body and created a ball of fire which she steered right in his face as he was still hanging right above her to cut her throat. The man shrieked and jumped off, dropping his sword as he grabbed his face. Half of it was heavily burned, the flesh was black and some of it hung down from his face with just a few last strings. Yaël sprinted and grabbed his sword as he made herself fall down and slip through her opponent’s legs, making the dust fly up. Now all the training finally paid off.

She quickly jumped back up again and kept on regaining warmth from the guy’s body, which she sent to her new sword, setting it on fire. Maybe the opponent would be smart enough to surrender. Hopefully…

“ _Well, this isn’t exciting, let’s make sure the fight won’t end that quickly, spice it up_!” Yaël looked up confusedly. But within a split second, the device in her neck send an electric shock through her whole body, making her fall into the dirt again.

That’s cheating! She wanted to yell, but she couldn’t. As she rolled onto her back, her eyes crossed the VIP section and saw Loki looking at her. He was probably enjoying this sight. She could only stare at him.The shock disappeared as quickly as it had begun. Yaël saw some light flicker in the corner of her eye. She rapidly jumped up before the purple guy could stab her, still, he managed to make a deep cut in her forehead. When she touched the wound, she felt the warm blood dripping over her fingers.

She didn’t have a weapon except for her powers anymore, so they just had to do. With just a move of her hand the guy sunk knee-deep into the earth and got stuck. As she was still a bit exhausted from getting electrocuted, she used a few movements to start freezing the man. She ran in circles around him, making sure it went as quick as possible. The man panicked and yelled, thinking he was facing his death.

“Please, just surrender!” Yaël begged him, with the taste of blood from the hit she got earlier filling her mouth. But once again, her plans got crossed by the device in her neck, forcing her onto her knees. As soon as the man noticed his hands weren’t frozen yet and Yaël stopped freezing him, he once more plucked the sword from the ground.

The shock stopped right in time for her to dodge the thing, only making a cut in her arm instead of stabbing her heart.

“Oh, come on!” Yaël didn’t even recognize her own voice anymore as she screamed out her frustration.

She took deep breaths. These shocks were taking their toll. Leaning with her hands on the ground, she looked at the purple guy, who was still stuck in the ground.

“Look,” she huffed “I don’t want to kill you...” She didn’t even know if the man understood English, but he nodded. And again a shock went through her body. She let out a scream, trying to fight the pain. “I-I can’t-“ she hissed through her teeth.

The man nodded again and put his hands on her cheeks, holding her face, like he knew what was coming and he was already forgiving her. This time, the shock didn’t stop anymore. Yaël did her best to stay conscious and kept staring into her opponent’s dark, purple eyes, his face, that she had ruined with her fire.

Yaël lost it, she blacked out.

When she woke up again, the whole arena was filled with blood. The dust colored red and the walls had big spats on them. There was nothing left from the man that had been holding her head. Yaël felt like she had to puke, but she didn’t even get the chance. The audience, that had been quiet for a little, suddenly burst into screams and applause. They seemed to be happy with the result. Their noise drummed into Yaël’s ears.

The guards decided it took way too long for her to get up, so as she was still getting onto her feet, they each grabbed an arm and dragged her back out of the arena.

“So, eh, now we know what happens if we trigger that girl a bit too much. I’ll call her The Bomb, because of multiple reasons! Now, who’s next!” The noise of enthusiasm was still following her. Was Loki cheering too now?


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to the hell the Russo brothers put us through with Infinity War, were going to change some certain points in our stories, so we're able to fix all of it.  
> So, if you notice something strange in this or one of our other stories from this series, please keep in mind that everything is under reconstruction. Also, please report illogical faults, plotholes and such, if you want to, of course :)  
> We're very grateful for the support you've given us with this series. You can expect for more content to come!
> 
> Greets,  
> Kalkoenvsneoklak and Caspinn

Yaël thought she could feel the bacteria move into her wounds. Hours were passed after the tournament, heck, it was even night already, but nobody went by to patch up her wounds. She’d do it herself if her cell didn’t only have a metal plank that served as a bed and a metal bowl that served as a toilet. Ripping off a piece of her clothes wouldn’t have helped either, as the fabric was stained with blood and dirt.

So all she could do was lay down and stare at the ceiling and think about how she had proved once more she wasn’t hero-material, back there in the arena.  Peter surely wouldn’t have been proud of her...

“How come you haven’t escaped yet?” Yaël didn’t even have the energy to scare up from the sudden, recognizable voice. She just tilted her head to look Loki in the eyes.

“Maybe the door is armed against fire and water and maybe, just maybe there isn’t any stone or earth around here to throw at it.”

“Come on, you’re way more creative than that,” Loki said while crossing his arms.

“Why do you even care?” Yaël mumbled while pushing herself a bit up so she’d be able to lean against the cold, metal wall.

“Well,” Loki sighed “You shouldn’t be locked up like some kind of brainless pawn.”

“Excuse me!” Yaël snapped back. “Isn’t that exactly what you’ve done to me?! Remember? The Chitauri?!” Loki lost his self-assurance for just a split-second, Yaël noticed as his eyebrows dropped for a moment. He almost looked sad... And then it was gone again.

“Look, that was a complicated situation,” he started in that typical way of his.

“Complicated?! You wanted to rule over the earth, so you made a deal with Thanos, who’d help you out to do that and then you lured me into your plan! It was a complete selfish action, Loki!”

“Keep it down,” Loki whispered. He thought for a little moment before he answered Yaël. “It started off as a naive, selfish action, fed by revenge,” Loki looked her in the eyes “But once our situation got too... intense, I only had two choices left: sending you to Thanos, who would’ve killed you to get the stone out of your body or using you in the fight instead. One way or another, I still think I made the right decision. You should be thankful I spared your life,” he said cockily. Yaël’s mouth fell open

“Thankful? THANKFUL?! The whole planet looks at me like I should be caged! We could’ve ran away-“

“-Thanos isn’t somebody you can just run away from, Yaël! No matter how you turn the story, we, or for sure you, would be dead at the end of it. I did what I could to keep you alive!”

Yaël shut her mouth. Did he really try to save her? She shook her head. “Why didn’t you come to visit me afterwards, if you cared that much about me?” she hissed. Yaël saw the anger and impatience grow in Loki’s eyes. Oh, she loved triggering him.

“The first few months I got hold up a little with Asgardian stuff. But after that, I immediately contacted you-hold it!” Loki raised his hand with an arrogant flair when Yaël wanted to interrupt him. “But you were extremely foggy, not even remembering who I was. At first, that hurt me a little, but I understood that this way I could help you out without you distrusting me. So I helped you out with the memories-“

“Wait, you consciously visited my dreams? I thought it was all just memories ascending while I was sleeping?” Yaël’s mind was blown away.

“Most of it was, except for me.”

“So that’s why Charles told me he felt a bit suspicious about you!”

“Probably...” Loki shrugged. “But the reason I actually came to you tonight is to tell you I’m probably going to leave this planet. I don’t really know how yet... but since Thor arrived, I suppose he’ll stir everything up just to get out of here and that probably involves me.” Suddenly Yaël remembered Loki looking down on her from the VIP-section in the audience.

“But why would you leave this planet? The Grandmaster seems to favour you...  How did you even manage to do that?”

Loki’s cheeks flashed red, which was a rare occurrence. Yaël’s eyes grew big, did she just manage to make Loki feel ashamed?

“Loki, what have you done?” she asked with a grin.

“Nothing!” he answered while fiddling with his hands.

“Okay, I’ll have to guess then! Hmm, I heard rumours in the hallways about the Grandmaster having a huge sex-drive... So he probably has some favourites which he picks to do it with.” Loki not reacting to that made Yaël raise her eyebrows. “No way!” she let out. “He managed to make you his toy!”

Loki rolled his eyes. “It’s called surviving. I’m leaving now.”

And right before she saw Loki’s apparition turn to dust, Yaël managed to ask: “Wait, did you tell me you want to leave this planet so I can go with you and go back home?”

“Of course I want you to get off this planet too, but I can’t promise you you’re going back to earth that quickly.” He knew Helvegen wasn’t her home.

“With the Völ-I mean, Hela stuff?” Loki nodded.

“Can you please explain that to me? I don’t really understand what’s going on...”

“Sorry, I wish I could explain it to you, but even I don’t fully grasp why your queen is our sister, although I have a theory. I can’t stay any longer, Yaël, I’ll be back as soon as possible, but I still have to play my role here until I’m sure what the plans are to escape.” And with that, he disappeared.

The Grandmaster probably had called him or something. Somehow, Yaël felt a bit sorry for Loki, being some kind of pleasure-slave. But on the other hand, Yaël knew Loki as being promiscuous, so he’d probably be able to handle this.

Yaël waited until the guards had brought her some food, because, hey, free food. And this way the guards would stay away for a little while. After she was finished, Yaël walked towards the door and inspected the lock. Then she tried steering air through it and moved her finger to mimic the air opening the lock. As if it was a wonder, the rectangular doorknob moved. Holy shit, did she manage to do that from the first try?

Yaël’s proud face fell down when she saw a woman walking in. She looked like a female body builder in full armour. Her hair was pulled back in a firm knot, which made her look even more sternly. So, Yaël obviously failed at picking open the lock.

“I’m here with a message from the Grandmaster,” the woman went straight to the point.

“Oh, and what may that be?” Yaël crossed her arms. She had decided this Grandmaster wasn’t a friend of hers.

“You, the Bomb-“

“Oh, please, don’t call me the Bomb-“

“Are elected to fight on a rank higher, congratulations,” the woman added as dry as possible.

Yaël rubbed her eye and sighed. “What great news,” she answered sarcastically. “Can I go to sleep now?” The woman rolled her eyes and walked out, locking Yaël up once again.

After she was sure she didn’t hear anything anymore, she started fiddling with the lock again. Of course it took a few times, since her air steering still wasn’t completely on point as the power still seemed to be doing whatever the fuck, whenever the fuck.

Luckily Yaël was still in a very low ranked cell. She had noticed the Grandmaster didn’t take those gladiators very seriously as the cells weren’t extremely secured. Of course, the things were water- and fireproof, but the locks weren’t that hard to open if you had the chance to potter with them a bit. Despite that the lock had a very complex pattern to crack.

When the lock clicked for a second time a little while later, Yaël waited to see if anyone was walking in again, but nobody did. With a wide grin, Yaël opened the door and faced the light coming from the hallway.

 

* * *

 

 

_Many hours later:_

Yaël heard the automatic door behind her open. In a reflex, she stopped aiming one of her two hands from aiming at the scenery in front of her. Instead, she aimed one at whoever was walking in while the other one kept steering fire to the arena. Her heart was beating fast. If someone caught her right now, she’d be in deep trouble. Yet, she wasn’t going to stop with what she was doing; she wasn’t going to leave this hellhole of a planet before she was done.

 As soon as Yaël recognized the man who stormed in, she put her hand down.

“Please don’t attack me with fire, miss, that doesn’t really work on a rock,” Korg said while staring at the flames that were licking Yaël’s fingers. “Miek, on the other hand, is kind of sensitive to it.”

“Holy shit, Korg! You can’t just storm into rooms like that! What are you doing?” Yaël grumbled, aiming her hand back to the arena, together with her other hand.

“I’m kind of starting another revolution, wanna join?” Didn’t she have to wait for Loki? But on the other hand, would Loki have waited for her? He’s probably long gone already. He hadn't even informed her about a plan of some sort.

“Wait a sec,” Yaël huffed “I’m almost finished.” Korg took a few steps forward to look out of the broken window, to the arena.

“Why are you taking over the control room? Did you start a revolution of yourself already? I’m just here to open the locks of the cells and to find one of these colourful pop-up maps. You know, to find the way to all the cellblocks, because the exit needs to get opened by hand for security reasons-”

“No, I’m not starting a revolution,” Yaël smiled as she interrupted Korg’s story. He’d be able to tell all his plans to whoever, just by accident. But she liked Korg’s innocence. “I’m making a statue.”

“Of Adaro, I see,” he said while wandering around, looking for the right buttons to open the cells. “You know, I was already wondering why there was a trail of frozen guards this way-”

“Wait, you knew his name all along?!” Yaël grunted annoyingly, interrupting his chattering once again.

“Yes. Why?” Korg totally didn’t get what her fuzz was about.

“You see this man at my feet?!” Korg’s eyes followed Yaël’s finger.

“Oh, gosh, was that half-frozen guard there all along? Weird I hadn’t noticed him...”

“I’VE BEEN –uh- ‘PERSUADING’ THIS MAN TO TELL ME ADARO’S NAME FOR AN HOUR!” Yaël shouted, still steering fire at the statue, working on the facial details.

“But, you know, it’s a good thing. I mean, the more guards that are down already, the quicker all the slaves, I mean, “gladiators”, can be released,” Korg didn’t even sound a tad bit nervous, the freaking optimist. Yaël rolled her eyes. He finally found the right buttons, apparently, because he pushed a few.

“Done,” she mumbled as she stopped tapping the body heat from the guard on the floor. She turned around and faced Korg and Miek with a wide grin.

“I’m ready to join your revolution!”

“Oh, good! I was just going to ask you when you-“ Yaël started pushing them towards the door. She didn’t know Korg that well yet, but she had learned he talked a bit too much during the most impossible moments.

 “You know,” Korg raised his gun as the door slid open and checked the hallway before walking out of the control room “I just wonder, why would you feel the urge to, you know, make a statue of a man that didn’t even get through the first round. I know he wasn’t a match against you, but-uh-“

“It’s more an ode to all those who weren’t even worthy to get a ‘name’ before they died. That, and I want the Grandmaster to know that I made the thing that is too big to get removed in a few days, the thing that will force him to cancel coming arena fights, the thing that will shimmer in his eyes as soon as the sun touches it.“

“I don’t know if that sounds evil or not, but I kind of need you to help me, so I’ll keep my mouth shut about it.”

“Good idea.”

“That, and it’s a good distraction for the Grandmaster.”

 

* * *

 

 

Of course, as soon as they ran into the cell-compartment, they got greeted by a whole school of guards, if guards worked like fish, of course. It was when Yaël started grinning, the guards started looking a bit hesitant, but they kept sprinting towards the ‘escaped prisoners’.

“Korg, you and Miek keep going, I’ll keep these guys at work!” Korg nodded and took another passage while Yaël kept running forward.

In a hallway made of some special kind of steel, Yaël really wished she’d be able to steer air fluently. She couldn’t use rock here and she had to pull water and fire from people’s bodies. Not that that was hard, it was just a little bit grosser than just using it from other, non-living sources.

Yet, she didn’t think about it for too long as she immediately started dehydrating the first few guards. They started shooting around in panic as they felt something was changing in their bodies, and accidentally killed a few of their colleagues. No problem, less work for Yaël. She quickly ducked away as a few of the laser-shot flew into her direction.

Yaël jumped up again and before those dehydrated guards even had the chance to faint and crash down, she had already made a long whip from the water she had gained. The flabbergasted guards got wacked around, like they were toys. Some of them still tried to shoot at her, others tried to run away, but she smoothly dodged the bullets, whacked the whip around the guards, one by one, and smashed them against the walls.

“There you go,” Yaël mumbled as she tried not to step on the unconscious bodies while searching for keys. The more keys they had, the quicker they could release the prisoners instead of fiddling with the locks for too long.

Korg had used the extremely colourful, glittery pop-up map he had found in the control room to explain her the plan, so it didn’t take Yaël too long to group up with him and Miek again. They apparently had already opened the exit of one of the hallways, because they were joined by a dozen freed gladiators, Yaël noticed as she ran up to them. Miek already opened the next lock right when Yaël joined them.

Another dozen of prisoners joined them with loud cheering, some of them even had tears in their eyes. What a life had they been through, locked up, forced to kill others just for the pleasure of the Grandmaster and his audience. Yaël only had to do it once, but some of these people had been here for years.

Opening the rest of the hallways went very quickly, as Korg had already gathered a small army within a few hours, so guards didn’t even have a chance against them anymore. Not that they ever had against Yaël. The rest of the exit-locks were opened by the keys she had stolen, by Miek’s knive-hands or by Yaël’s air-fiddling.

So after Korg had double checked if everyone was released, he guided them towards the Grandmaster’s plane-collection. Yaël heard the other gladiators mumble when they ran passed windows that showed the arena.

“Is that a statue of that new kid that lost last fight?”

“That’s Adaro, right?”

“That’s a gladiator made of glass! Look!” At least those were the reactions Yaël understood, many other gladiators spoke different languages, some of them sounding like sneezing, so Yaël automatically wanted to yell “Bless you!” the whole time.

At one point, someone tapped her shoulder and started gargling, which led to Yaël almost ramming her fingers into his throat because she thought he was choking. Luckily Korg stopped her and, eh, talked? Talked to the man instead. Everyone seemed to think Yaël was Korg’s right hand, while he had been leading this whole thing. Yaël tried to back off a few times, disappear in the big group, but they always pushed her forward again.

One of the other freed prisoners even gave her an old, long cloak. It was deep-blue with some cupper-coloured detailing.  Of course the, uh, woman, didn’t speak a word English, Norse or Sil, so when she tried explaining something to Yaël, Yaël tried to sign she didn’t understand a letter of what she was saying.

“She says that it’s a gift for the bomb-goddess,” Korg translated casually.

“The WHAT NOW? Where do I find a freaking goddess?!” Yaël stared at the satin-ish fabric in her hands, a fabric that clearly used to shimmer.

“It’s for you, the gold-eyed goddess.” Korg kept on translating like the woman was talking about the weather.

“Heck no, I’m not a goddess!” Yaël mumbled while trying to give the cloak back, but the woman put her hands against her back and shook her head with a sweet smile.

“She really, really wants you to have it. It used to be her daughter’s.”

“Oh, please don’t tell me what happened to her daughter,” Yaël rubbed her eyes. She suddenly felt exhausted. If there was one thing in the whole universe that didn’t describe Yaël, then it was being a goddess. Yet the woman kept staring at her hopefully, like she was waiting for Yaël to say she loved it. So, because Yaël wasn’t able to say anything to her, she put it on and slid the hood over her hair. The woman grinned, the tears in her eyes made Yaël swallow difficulty as she tried to smile back.

 

* * *

 

 

Finally, they saw the spaceships Korg had been talking about. Everybody started chattering happily, but Yaël heard a weird electric noise and signed to Korg so he’d listen.

“I’ll go first,” Yaël proposed “Just follow right behind me.” Korg nodded, not stressing out at all.

Yaël walked to the corned and glanced to what was behind it. Right at the same time, she heard Korg mumble: “Hey, what’s this?” behind her. There, on the ground, laid Loki, stunned by the electroshocks that constantly went through him by the device in the neck.

“You have to be kidding me!” Yaël said flabbergasted. How was he not gone yet?! Korg pushed the button he found and freed Loki from the shocks.

“Oh, come on, why wouldn’t you give me the pleasure of playing with it before releasing him,” Yaël complained. Loki glanced at her as he got back up. But instead of taking Yaël’s invite for a childish contest of poking each other verbally, he threw a little smile and thanked Korg, acting like he had manners.

“Hey, man! We’re about to jump on that ginormous spaceship, you wanna come?” Korg explained shortly, immediately trusting the Trickster.

“Well, you do seem like you’re in desperate need of leadership.” Loki huffed with a smirk, still recovering from the shocks.

“Why, thank you!” Korgh answered with a dumb smile.

“Wait a sec,” Yaël protested “We were doing great without your _leadership_ , Lord Asshole.” Loki frowned and pointed at her, but got interrupted as he opened his mouth to give her an ugly answer.

“So it’s decided?” Korg asked.

“What?” Loki and Yaël hissed simultaneously.

“You two are going to lead us, right?” Korg turned to the saved gladiators for an answer, who all started to cheer. Was everybody on this planet as ingenuous as Korg or had that something to do with being locked up for years?

“All hail the gods!” someone yelled. Nope, they were just plainly dumb.

“Oh, Jesus… I’m not a go-“

“Please, dear. Jesus never was a god,” Loki interrupted her with a wide grin as he gently put his hand against her back to push her towards the ship, making her shut her mouth.

 


	27. Chapter 27

“Really?!” Yaël grunted to Loki’s back “We promised these people freedom and you take them to war against your sister on your stupid planet!” Loki had put his hands on his back and stared out of the wall-filling window. He was standing a few steps higher than her, but Yaël was able to see the flashes from lasers shooting at them from where she was standing. The whole ship was in chaos whilst trying to flee from Sakaar.

“They wanted to do us a favour,” Loki answered without turning to her.

“They simply couldn’t decline, Loki!” Yaël crossed her arms. Why did she even bother arguing with that stubborn man?

“Exactly,” Loki finally turned around and walked down towards Yaël. “They are stuck on this spaceship, just like you and me. Yes, they are finally free, but they come from all different planets, some of those planets don’t even exist anymore. Many of them don’t have a family anymore. Besides, it’s not like I didn’t ask them.” He sounded a bit superciliously, as usual, while walking passed her.

“The only reason why you left Sakaar is because you want your brother to keep on loving you, even though disappointing him is your favourite hobby! Yet, you keep on trying to act too cool for your family’s recognition!”

Loki stopped, but Yaël noticed the tension in his shoulders immediately. She knew this had always been a very delicate subject to him. A shock went through the ship, people yelled commandos at each other.

“I just wanted to go back to earth!” Yaël couldn’t stop the words from streaming out of her mouth until Loki finally stopped her rage talk.

He turned around rapidly. “You want to go back to earth? What’s so appealing there? The friends who don’t even grasp the width and strength of your powers?”

“Oh, you mean the friends that don’t force me to use my powers like you did?” Yaël corrected him sarcastically. Yes, she knew he used her to make sure she’d be safe from Thanos, but she still didn’t have to be happy about that. Another shock went through the ship as they got hit again. Yaël tried her best to keep balance.

For a second, she thought Loki was going to yell at her, looking at his clenched jaw. But for some reason, he relaxed and spoke to her calmly.

“If we somehow save Asgard, I assure you I’ll bring you back to earth personally. Now, I want you to stay in the ship as soon as we get there.” Yaël raised her eyebrow as an answer. Had she left her friends, fled from their stupid war, just to get into another one as soon as Loki steps back into her life?

At this point she really wished she was just with Peter, Wade and Wanda, watching some series. But that felt like Utopia right now. She knew that even if she’d get back to earth, things wouldn’t be the same as they used to. Maybe someone died, and Yaël wouldn’t even know because she decided to stay out of it. The image of Peter’s death burned its way into her mind. But Yaël strengthened her back, because that was not her focus right now, she needed to survive what was coming.

When Yaël heard someone yell: “We’re going through the Devil’s Anus!” through the hallways, she turned her head and stared to the window once again. An enormous vortex was right in front of them and seemed to grow bigger as it pulled and then finally swallowed the spaceship.

“Make the jets ready for turbo!” After hearing that, Yaël looked around to find something to hold on to. She jumped toward a handrail, but was just too late. Her fingers stroked the rail right when the ship vibrated and flew forward with a speed that threw Yaël back and got her smacking against a steel pole.

“Come on, don’t faint,” she mumbled to herself while blinking to get the blurriness away. Were those meteorites flying passed the windows or was she hallucinating?

Loki somehow managed to get to her without falling down ten times, by grabbing everything he could hold on to. “Don’t try to get up,” he yelled through the loud rumbling of the ship. “You’ll fall back down immediately!”

Yaël grumbled something about wearing seatbelts as she saw Miek and others flying through the ship, bumping into each other and smashing against stuff.

When spaceship finally slowed down, Yaël heard one of the passengers mutter something about the Champion fighting against a dog. Before she even had the chance to think about getting up, Loki’s hand already hoovered in front of her face. He pulled her up like she was just a light feather, whilst she knew she wasn’t the skinniest and she was kind of tall. Not as tall as Loki, though. They both immediately hurried themselves towards the window.

Yaël wished she had come to Asgard on a more peaceful time so she could take her time to look at the magnificence of the Rainbow bridge, instead of seeing it getting smudged with blood by the Hulk, fighting a big black wolves on one side and Asgardians clashing into…zombies on the other side.

Wait a sec! Yaël turned her head back to the Hulk so quickly her neck hurt. Big green hands grabbing her leg and smashing her against the concrete flashed in her mind. She knew it had been an accident, at least that was what Cap had told her, but still, looking at the ginormous creature made Yaël swallow loudly.

When she looked to her side, she saw Loki’s face turn even more pale than it already was. An odd duo, Yaël and Loki were. Err, no, they weren’t a duo. He was just going to bring her back to earth if they both survived this and then he’d probably leave again immediately.

Not that that was bad, right? No, that wasn’t bad! Loki probably didn’t even care about her, never had. But why would he even care to visit her dreams then? Whatever, Yaël had a George- errr- Jason running around on earth who was definitely more handsome than Loki, less unpredictable and had the same who had amount of arrogance.

No, you know what? Scratch all of that, she was going back to earth and she’d be going on with her single, easy life. Just drunkenly sleeping around with random dudes seemed just fine to her.

She was overthinking this stuff again, instead of going with the flow. She and Loki didn’t speak a word anymore as they both went towards the exit of the spaceship, like his mind was busy too. He quickly checked the passengers, and signed at Miek and Korg, who immediately, fight-ready, jumped off the ship, into the cloud of mist, and ran into the fight.

With that, Korg landed behind one of the zombie-ish dudes who was almost going to stab some guy with dreadlocks, and blasted the zombie into pieces.

“Hey, man,” Yaël couldn’t help but let out a chuckle while hearing Korg’s typical introduction in the middle of a freaking war. “I’m Korg, this is Miek. We jump on that spaceship and get outta here, wanna come?”

“Your savior is here!” Loki stated loudly while arrogantly raising his arms with a grin. Oh, the man sure had a feeling for extra drama, Yaël thought while crossing her arms and sarcastically rolling her eyes behind the prince’s back.

Some sort of bridge sled out of the ship and fastened itself against the rainbow bridge. Loki greeted Asgard by saying:“Did you miss me? Everyone, on that ship, now!”while walking passed the people, towards the fight, followed by Yaël.

Loki looked over his shoulder and sighed.

“Well, at least I asked you to stay on the ship, so you can’t blame me for pulling you into this fight.”

“Welcome home,” the dude with the dreadlocks said. “I saw you coming.” His eyes flew to Yaël, like he even expected her to be there. She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“Of course, you did,” Loki let out a bit dryly. And with that, he pulled his knives and slid through the first zombie that stormed towards him.

It didn’t take Yaël very long to detect an issue she hadn’t calculated in.

“Bloody hell,” she grunted as she picked up one of the weapons from the corpses covering the bridge “I can’t retract any warmth from those nose-less imbeciles!” Yaël quickly slid through one of the zombies, who was aiming on an already very busy Loki. She quickly stomped her foot on the ground and created a big boulder from the rocks beneath her. With the movement she made with her arm while stabbing another living dead, she simultaneously made the bolder fly intoVöluspá’s (or Hela’s, apparently) army and crush some zombies.

Yaël still didn’t really understand what the hell was going on with the queen of Helvegen, but it was clear she had been planning on using Yaël to clear out the Asgardians. Bad luck for Völuspá, because Yaël had some more appealing ‘connections’ from team Asgard, even though Loki was a complete jerk.

Loki looked up at the bolder and grinned through his messy hair. “What a shame for the Grandmaster that he missed the opportunity to see more of your excellent fighting,” he smirked.

“Aw, well, thank you!” Yaël huffed as she full-force kicked one down and immediately planted her sword into its chest.

Out of the blue, clouds gathered and thunder rumbled through the sky. With that, an enormous bolt of lightning struck into the castle. Yaël even had to hold her had above her eyes, covering them from the light to see what was happening.

“What is going on?” she asked Loki. His smile showed he knew exactly what was happening. Immediately after her question, Thor jumped down from the palace onto the Rainbow bridge and with that crushing down dozens of Völuspá’s zombie-army. “Wow, he’s in the zone, alright,” she mumbled as she watched Thor knock down enemy after enemy, using his lightning.

Well, maybe it was time for her to join his ‘zone’.

“Loki, cover me!” she said as she let herself fall down onto her hands. The closer to the water, the easier this _should_ be. Loki moved around her smoothly, not even questioning her actions. Water raised from underneath, forming into a few dozens of men with weapons of sharp ice as it reached the bridge. This way, Yaël created her own army. Her water army immediately clashed onto the zombies and started fighting.

Yaël got up, readying herself. Okay, so this was what she had been training for. She had to use al the techniques she had discovered and throw them into this battle.

“I’ve got your back!” she yelled at Loki above the noise of ice scraping into metal breastplates. Loki nodded, not losing sight of the enemy’s army surrounding them.

She had to focus on her own creations’ fighting and her own moves, which was extremely hard in such a way it made her head hurt massively, like she had to split her personality. Luckily, Loki was quite concentrated and noticed immediately he had to steer her a little in their back-to-back attack position. At some point, he grabbed her under her arms from behind and made her tumble so she smoothly kicked down a few of the zombies as she landed. Without any hesitation, given the hectic situation that didn’t give her mind the opportunity to go even further in overdrive, Yaël followed Loki’s moves.

She was so sucked up into the fight, that she almost didn’t notice the fireworks shooting form a crashed down spaceship and a badass-looking, armed woman walking out of it. The woman immediately owned everything that crossed her path.

Finally all the dead-living things were dead again, like they were supposed to be. Thor, the armed woman, Loki and Yaël (and her team of water-people) gathered after they defeated every last one of Hela’s army.

“Yaël, how marvellous to see you here alive and well! Where did Loki kidnap you from this time?” Thor huffed, slapping her on her shoulder, hard enough to make her lose her breath. Heck, the man was missing an eye and it looked gross as fuck. Yaël cocked her eyebrow sarcastically.

“Sakaar,” she said. “You dweebs accidentally took me with you during my holiday in Norway.” Thor chuckled with a grin and patted her shoulder roughly, though this time softer than before.

“You’re late,” Thor’s attention switched over to Loki.

“You’re missing an eye,” Loki answered like the wise-ass he was, answering Thor’s hit with another one.

“This isn’t over,” the other woman said, grabbing back both the brother’s attention.

“Oh, Brunhilde, meet Yaël. Yaël, meet Brunhilde, she’s a Valkyrie.” Yaël nodded shortly with a friendly but tense smile.

This was no time for long introductions and telling each other about their lives, yet it was Brunhilde who frowned and said: “I feel like I’ve seen you before.”

“Uh, I’ve almost taken over earth and I’ve fought in the arena and partly lead the rebellion on Sakaar, those are the only two things I can think of that could somehow make me notorious,” Yaël shrugged.

“I think we should disband the Revengers,” Thor said, ignoring their conversation and pulling Brunhilde and Yaël from their thoughts.

“Seriously, the _Revengers_?” Yaël asked in disbelief. Brunhilde nodded to her to confirm the fact that Thor did name their group the Revengers, though looking like she thought the name was pretty clever. Oh, she had no idea…

“So what do we do next?” the woman asked, once again pulling the attention back to the problem: Hela, walking towards them from the other side of the bridge. Yaël had to admit that the Goddess of Death had a whole lot of flair, walking there menacingly with her arms open as if she was the villain in some sort of movie…

“Hit her with a lightning blast,” Loki blurted out. It was clear that he was running of ideas.

“I just hit her with the biggest lightning blast in the history of lighting, it did nothing!” Thor countered.

“We just need to hold her off until everyone is on board,” Brunhilde stated.

“It won’t end there,” Thor answered. “The longer Hela’s on Asgard, the more powerful she grows. She’ll hunt us down. We need to stop her here and now.”

“So what do we do?” the Valkyrie asked. Loki looked at his brother and stated he was not, never ever, going to do ‘Get help’. Yaël grinned. Even in war, these two brothers were acting like toddlers.

Thor thought for a second and then it seemed like something came up into his mind.

“Asgard is not a place,” he stated, “it’s a people.”

He turned towards his brother, Loki giving him a questioning look.

“Loki.This was never about _stopping_ Ragnarok…this was about _causing_ Ragnarok.” Yaël looked up

“Wait a sec, are you telling me I got dragged into a fight without a purpose?”

“Hold it,” Loki countered “Remember when I told you to stay on the ship and that I, when you didn’t, said you couldn’t blame me for getting into this fight?” Loki said dryly. Yaël threw him a sarcastic glance, then signed at Thor to resume telling his plans. Somehow, Loki always managed to be extremely, annoyingly blunt and for some reason, Yaël wouldn’t want him to change that, even though it made her sometimes want to scratch his eyes out. 


	28. Chapter 28

Yaël saw Loki sprint away to get some sort of crown from a man called Surtur. Well, it was clear that Yaël didn’t understand what the hell was going to happen and nobody had time to explain it to her. The only thing she did understand was that the Queen was walking towards them and she looked pissed off.

“Shall we?” Thor asked.

“After you,” Brunnhilde answered.

“Hell yeah,” Yaël whispered at herself as she prepared herself for the next battle. Thor used to have the tendency of looking down at her, calling her ‘just one of Loki’s toys’. But during this fight, Thor hadn’t shown his arrogance yet, which she could get used to.

The lighting flew around Thor dynamically as he ran up to Völuspá, Hela, whoever the fuck she was. Brunnhilde followed his steps, pulled her sword and started attacking the Queen too. Okay, so Yaël needed to play this smart, because she had clearly no single chance of winning against Hela if she’d just start attacking her.

Seeing that Thor and Hilde were keeping Hela busy, Yaël took a few steps back and started retracting water from Hela’s body. Hela was so caught up in the fight that she didn’t even notice. At least until she knocked downBrunnhilde and Thor, who climbed up again and yelled to dreadlock-guy to go.

While the spaceship started rising, Hela stared at her shaking hands, looked up and met Yaël’s eyes. Busted. Yaël had already gained a good amount of water from Hela and had send it all immediately into the water underneath the bridge.

Hela’s eyes burned with fury as she raised her hands and made a giant spear that pierced through the ship and made it stop from leaving the planet. Then she stormed towards Yaël, who desperately tried to keep the witch back by cooling herself down to throw fire balls at Hela while still pulling water from her body.

“Come on, come on,” Yaël mumbled to herself, trying to weaken Hela quicker.

Hela grabbed Yaël’s throat before Brunnhilde or Thor even had the chance to jump onto his sister. As soon as Hela pulled Yaël closer, recognition flashed in her eyes, followed by a smirk.

“The girl with the golden eyes,” she spoke softly. “I believe I asked you to join _me_ , but instead, you somehow managed to team up with these braindead princes.”

Yaël wasn’t able to breathe anymore and tried to scratch Hela’s hands open. At the same time, she still managed to keep dehydrating the furious woman that was tilting her by her throat.

Hela noticed water flowing over the bridge, splashing into the water in which the Hulk was still wrestling with the enormous wolf.

“I believe that’s mine,” Hela turned back to Yaël and squeezed her throat a bit harder. “I demand you to put it back!” Yaël noticed Hela’s skin started to look like paper.

“Ain’t…gonna…happen…” Yaël huffed, still trying to break free from Hela’s grasp. When Thor andBrunnhilde tried to get to Hela, she made spears and threw those at them, so they needed to duck away again.

“It was not a question, the other option is death.”

“I’m…afraid,” Yaël gasped between her words and started to feel lightheaded, black dots appeared in her vision.

“Of course,” Hela smirked, but Yaël shook her head.

“I’m…afraid…I’m…not…that…good… at dying.” By that time, Yaël had collected enough warmth from Hela’s body to shoot fire at her. Hela flew back and immediately climbed up again with a murderous look on her face.

Yaël rubbed her sore throat as she coughed when she could finally breathe again. It was a pain in her ass to swallow, she even felt like she was going to throw up. But yet, Yaël blinked away the tears in her eyes as she readied herself again for Hela’s next move.

When she heard the sound of gunshots, she turned her head and looked over her shoulder. Some dude from the ship was shooting at the zombies who were climbing onto the spaceship that was still desperately trying to leave. Wait, wasn’t that man on Hela’s side just a few hours ago?

He jumped out of the spaceship and yelled at Hela while he was shooting at more zombies. What the heck was he planning on doing against Hela with just two machine guns? Thor had struck that woman with lightning and Yaël had pulled out a few tricks too that would usually kill someone but as Hela was Hela, she somehow managed to keep on fighting. So, no, a few gunshots wasn’t really going to get her down. But…it was an excellent distraction, Yaël thought as she managed to pierce a few zombies with a move, inspired from Hela’s spears.

With ease, she pulled gigantic ice spears from the water, right through the rainbow bridge. For a second Yaël was hopeful. Maybe Loki would make it in time, before they all got killed. Luckily, the spaceship was already able to fly away, as machine-gun-guy had destroyed the spear that was holding the ship back.

But in just a blink of an eye, Hela had already thrown a blade at the guy with the machine guns. Yaël saw his body crash down against the bridge. A zombie ran up to her from her back, thinking she was too distracted by the death to see him coming. But by the time he had reached her, she had already put him on fire. She turned around to face him and simultaneously steered a whip from the water that grabbed him by his feet.

“Idiot,” Yaël mumbled as the whip quickly pulled the zombie into the water. Her voice sounded hoarse from getting choked just a few minutes ago.

Yaël looked up when she heard some sort of whooshing sound and quickly ducked away. Even though she managed to dodge the blade flying towards her, Hela was smart enough to surprise Yaël by simultaneously creating a spear that went right through Yaël’s upper right leg and her hip. Calling it painful would be minimalizing. She didn’t dare to look down, but she felt perfectly where Hela’s weapons had impaled her. Unable to move to free herself from the spear, she saw Hela walking towards her with a smirk. With just a simple move with her hands, the Queen was holding two sword-ish looking weapons.

“I should’ve killed you on Helvegen when I had the chance, back when you were just a little child. I could’ve known that you’d be more like your mother than Nilla is.”

“ _Was_ ,” Yaël corrected her arrogantly, not wanting to please Hela by showing in how much pain she actually was.

“Oh, how unfortunate,” Hela said insensibly.

Yaël saw Brunnhilde’s eyes grow big as she crawled back up again, like she just remembered something. But Yaël could only do what was expected from her: distract the bitch in front of her now that she had her full attention.

“Look,” Yaël conjured a flame in her hand, which grew bigger and bigger every second. “Feeling cold already?” she grinned at Hela, clamping onto her act even though her leg must be dead by now.  Hela’s lips turned a bit blue.

“STOP!” Hela growled, making another spear that flew right through Yaël’s hand. Yup, she was going to die. There was no fucking way she’d survive all the blood loss Hela had caused.

Yaël even had to blink a few times to get the blurriness and black dots out of her sight. She felt dizzy, like, a tired kind of dizzy. If she could just lay down for a minute…  But instead, Yaël managed to surprise Hela with a boulder crashing into her back and then ramming her onto the ground.

Of course Hela got up and of course Yaël knew that this would be her deathbed. Weird how things go, Yaël would die, fighting for a people she wasn’t even a part of. But that was just fine, she wasn’t a part of any people or planet after all.

“Hela, enough!” Thor’s voice rumbled into Yaël’s ears. The God of Thunder finally managed to get back up again, but didn’t look that healthy either. Meanwhile, Brunnhilde was crawling towards her sword. “You want Asgard? It’s yours!” Thor sounded breathless.

“Whatever game you’re playing, it won’t work,” Hela clearly didn’t trust a word Thor said. “You can’t defeat me.”

“No, I know,” Thor replied. “But he can.” Thor pointed his thumb behind him, to the palace and just when he said it, the towers burst into flames and crumbled down by the power of some sort of enormous demon rising through the whole building.

“Ah,” Yaël huffed a bit dumbly, unable to think anymore. “That must be Surtur.”

“No!” Hela looked more afraid than ever. Yaël had reduced her chances to fight this thing and Hela knew that. Hela knew that she was weakened and was no party against the enemy that was breaking down the whole palace, but even if Yaël hadn’t weakened her, Hela still wouldn’t win from that monster.

Brunnhilde ran towards Hela and pinned her down with her sword easily as Hela was finally distracted enough, followed by Thor, who broke down a piece of the bridge by using his lighting. Hela tumbled down into the water, which Yaël immediately started freezing down to keep Hela in the water, trying to not get distracted by her shaking fingers. It was too hard, but heck, she was still breathing so she had to be able to do it.

“Tremble before me, Asgard,” Surtur rumbled. “I am your reckoning!” He started tearing down everything his saw. Buildings that used to be homes got turning into dust as his fire spread.

Brunnhilde stared at the escaping ship. “The people are safe, that’s all that matters,” she said to Thor while walking towards Yaël who was still stuck by Hela’s spears. The both stopped next to her. Thor smoothly tilted Yaël out of the spears. She didn’t even have the energy anymore to hiss or to thank him.

He held her in his arms as the three of them looked at the demon in front of him, destroying what was once called Asgard.

“We’re fulfilling the prophecy,” Thor stated.

“I hate this prophecy.” Brunnhilde answered.

“So do I, but we have no choice. Surtur destroys Asgard, he destroys Hela, so that our people may live” Yaël just listened, not being able to be a part of their conversation. She was thankful that Thor wasn’t treating her like she was going to die or something, otherwise she’d think more about the pain than that she was doing right then. She didn’t want to get treated weirdly, say her goodbyes.

Now she could just peacefully stare at the flames and listen to the voices.

“But we need to let him finish the job, otherwise-“

Thor got interrupted by the Hulk storming towards Surtur.

“No!” Hulk started ramming and smashing onto the demon. “Hulk, stop, you moron!” Thor grumbled loudly.

The Hulk got, of course, smashed onto the bridge again.

“Hulk, stop! Just for once in your life, don’t smash!”

“Big monster!” Hulk countered, sounding pretty much like a disappointed child who can’t go into his favorite attraction.

“Let’s go!” Brunnhilde yelled.

“Fine!” The Hulk clearly had a weak spot for the Valkyrie. What? What was going to happen?

Hulk stormed towards them and grabbed Thor, still holding Yaël, and Brunnhilde right before he jumped extremely high. Yaël closed her eyes, succumbing from the pain at last.

 

* * *

 

 

When Yaël woke up again, she immediately started puking before she even had the time to look around. Even though there were people around her and she heard them talking, it felt like she wasn’t able to heard what exactly they were saying.

When she was finished, she looked up. Somehow, Hulk managed to jump into the spaceship. Someone dropped something about a fever, another one said something about missing the coronation. But Yaël let herself sink into the black water again. It was way more comfortable there than it was being conscious.

Yaël was looking up to her beautiful mother again, who was looking down on her with a smile while they were dancing. The firefly-ish insects filled the night with all different colours. All that the little Yaël of course noticed was that her mother didn’t only sing in Norse for the sun, but also about Elves in the meadow.

Right at that moment, her mother, with two different eye colours, braided long, dark hair and a white gown, looked a bit like an elf. When Yaël heard some sort of scraping noise, she searched where it was coming from. There, under a tree with branches and leaves looking like those from a Weeping Willow, sat Cem, carving into a piece of wood.

Yaël let go of her mother and sprinted towards her father, who caught her in his arms and put her onto his lap. The little Yaël started fiddling with his still blonde beard. He told her in Sil, while he was still carving in the piece of wood, that the neighbours got blessed with a son and they had named him Rozenrød.

“Du wille elshje hem,” _you’ll love him_ , Cem said to Yaël with lights of joy dancing in his eyes.

A pale man with long black hair suddenly appeared from the woods. He looked like an Elf to the little  Yaël too. When he signed her with a friendly smile to come, she climbed off Cem’s lap and started walking towards the man. When she looked back, her mother and father waved at her, looking happy. She chuckled as she waved back and then hopped towards the man.

“Let’s get you home, like I promised,” the man said as he took her hand.

When Yaël woke up again, she saw Raido, Cem and Nilla standing in front of her bed. But they didn’t look alive at all. Raido’s throat was cut open, blood still streaming over his body, Cem looked pale with blood dripping from his lips and Nilla… Nilla looked unrecognizable, her skin and hair were burned away completely.

Yaël woke up with a shock, gasping for air. But there was some sort of oxygen mask blocking her mouth. When she started grabbing it to get it away, her body hurt like hell by the movement. But yet, she was stubborn and pulled off the mask. She dropped it on the ground, breathing way too fast.

“Now, look what you did!” an Asgardian nurse mumbled, grabbing Yaël’s hand. Because Yaël had been too wild, the wound started bleeding through the patches again. She looked aside and saw her reflection in the wall-filling window that was filled with stars as the ship was still floating through space. Her throat and neck were purple and red and her complete leg and hip were patched up, just like her hand.

“Holy- I look like shit!”

“You sure do,” the nurse answered dryly.

“Look, don’t you have some sort of sleeping medicine?” Yaël asked, acknowledging why she had been seeing dead relatives and friends again. She hadn’t been taking her medicines in ages. 

“No way I’m going to give you something like that when you’re in this condition.”

“Great,” Yaël sighed.

“Now,” the nurse said when she was done patching up Yaël’s hand once again “Don’t you dare to move!” And with that, the nurse walked out of the room, followed by Loki walking in.

“Hi, I wish I could wave, but I’m kind of stuck,” Yaël said, still breathing a bit too heavy.

“How do you feel?” Loki asked.

“How do I look?” Yaël replied.

“Miserable,” Loki said bluntly without even thinking about it.

“Well, that’s weird, I feel great. Very heroic.”

Loki looked down and chuckled. “Well,” he said, filled with joy “You sure were brave out there. You fought well.”

“If I fought well,” Yaël countered, “my leg wouldn’t look like a failed attempt at scrambled egg right now. I guess I need more training.”

“You always seem to think you need more training, whilst I find you being unpolished one of your strongest points.”

“You know fights would go better if I could move more smoothly,” Yaël said “In comparison to Natasha, I move like a dead rock.”

“But you’re not the Black Widow, are you?” Loki asked, cocking his eyebrow.

“No, I’m not a hero at all and of all people, you should know that,” Yaël tried to point at him, but her whole hand was packed. Loki shrugged, moving forward to sit on the chair next to the bed she had been lying in.

“Hero, villain, all just titles that don’t really matter. I think you’re a living being who, just like me, lives upon making mistakes and fixing those.” This time, Yaël raised her eyebrows.

“That’s very poetic, coming from someone who has brought others into complete and utter danger for a bad cause more than once.” Loki did his typical smirk as an answer once again.

A young nurse passed to check on Yaël. As soon as the nurse noticed Loki, she started blushing and bumped against the side of the bed. With that, she quickly looked at Yaël’s wounds and hurried away again.

“Oh, wow,” Yaël smiled teasingly “You surely have already been active during the flight.” Loki crossed his arms and looked outside.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“You don’t need to justify yourself to me, Loki,” Yaël answered. But he kept staring outside, something was on his mind, but he had never been a big talker.

“I know you slept with several women while we were still together,” Yaël pointed out. Loki turned to her with a rush, looking alarmed.

“What do you mean?”

“Hah,” Yaël answered “I thought you knew that I knew and I really didn’t mind so-“

“No, not about that,” Loki waved his hand. “What do you mean with being together in the past?”

Shit!

“I don’t really know if we actually were together or not,” Yaël said carefully, trying to fix the mistake she just made. “And now we’re not.”

“Uh..” Holy shit, Loki was giving her a heart attack, but it seemed he was giving himself one too, still being conflicted about the relationship-thing. “I have to go,” he mumbled as he turned towards the door. He almost seemed to be…angry.

But before Loki even had the chance to open the door, Thor threw it open and walked in, cheerful as always.

“Ah, daughter of- eh- how are you?” he grinned widely.

“Thor,” Yaël answered a bit flabbergasted. “How are you able to remember my name, only during fights and immediately forget it afterwards?” Thor shrugged and then patted his brother on his back.

“Your woman did well against Hela!”

Yaël rubbed her eyes and mumbled: “Oh, god…” Then she pointed at the door as she hissed. “Get out, both of you! I have enough of your testosterone! I should’ve stayed on earth, fight the fucking Civil War and date Jason, that would’ve been the smart choice! Instead, I’m stuck here, almost cut into pieces, with you two dipshits! Maybe I should even have fought on Hela’s side! OUT!” The two man faltered out of the room, looking at her like she wasn’t feeling well. Thor, though, seemed to be laughing as he ran out, so he clearly wasn’t too insulted about her sudden reaction.

A bit later, Brunnhilde walked in, with a bottle filled with something that was clearly not a drink for children.

“Heard you threw the boys out,” she said as she plumped down onto a chair.

“The boys,” Yaël answered, “Were being real dicks.”

“Great!” Hilde grinned before taking a big gulp of her drink.

“I mean, I don’t even know what Loki wants! Why can’t he just be fucking clear for one second?! Oh, I’m sorry…” Yaël added as she felt like she was whining against a complete stranger.

“Here, take a sip!” Hilde passed her the bottle.

“I don’t know if I should drink, as the nurses won’t even give me some sort of sleeping pills.” Hilde rolled her eyes.

“Just drink it already, nurses enough around to fix you up again if the drink would cause some sort of trouble.” Yaël smiled before taking a sip.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“No problem,” Brunnhilde answered. “By the way, I discovered where I know you from, by the way.”

“Oh?” Yaël took another sip.

“Yeah, I knew your mom very well when she was still a Valkyrie. You look a lot like her!” Yaël didn’t really know what to say, and stared at Hilde instead. “Oh, shit, did the alcohol break you? Should I go get a nurse?” Hilde jumped up. “You know, as you are Helvegian, I thought you’d be able to handle something strong, but-“

“No, no! It’s not the alcohol, sit down!” Yaël signed. Hilde nodded and sat back down.

“So, how is she, your mom?” Yaël saw the curiosity in Brunnhilde’s eyes.

“She’s been dead for a few era’s already,” Yaël answered while scratching her hand. It wasn’t easy to talk about it, as everyone reacted with pity, which Yaël really avoided. Hilde’s mouth fell open, but then it seemed like she made a puzzle in her head.

“Wait, Hela did that, didn’t she? Goddammit!” Yaël gave Hilde a few minutes to curse. Then, when the woman was finally silent and was just staring at the wall angrily, Yaël dared to ask.

“How did Hela, daughter of Odin, end up on Helvegen, one of the smallest planets?”

“She got banned,” Brunnhilde explained. “She had fought many wars by Odin’s side, but Odin wanted to settle and Hela wanted to keep on feeding her own greed. And with that, Odin banished her.”

“But why to Helvegen?”

“Well,” she answered after taking another gulp, “Just because the planet is so small and secluded, it was an ideal punishment.”

“But how did my mom end up as a Valkyrie?” Yaël asked.

“Well, when Odin arrived at the peaceful planet, which it was back then, he let Hela choose a name for it. It was hers. He actually wanted to name it Valdr, ‘ruler of heaven’, but nope, she wanted to go with ‘way to hell’: Helvegen. He should’ve noticed she wasn’t a normal kid back then, but he didn’t. So they recruited a few habitants to join Odin and one of these recruited people was your mother, because she was able to steer air and fire, something not many Helvegians were able to do.”

So, Nilla had been kind or right. Agostina, their mom, had been a traitor towards the Queen, because she had been on Odin’s side instead on Hela’s. And to make sure people would stop looking at Hela as Odin’s daughter, the one that had slaughtered thousands, Hela had changed her name. Yaël sighed.

Hilde turned to the window and was quiet for a moment, sunken in her own thoughts and memories. “You know, it really saddens me to hear she passed away… I liked her a lot, she was a good friend of mine and was one of the last of us,” And with that, she poured down the rest of the bottle and gave Yaël another bottle to drink together.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya!
> 
> Just to keep you informed: tomorrow, kalkoekvsneoklak and I are going on a vacation for a few weeks.   
> Due to that, we don't know when or even if we're going to post or update the stories. 
> 
> Don't fear, we'll be back!
> 
> Thanks for reading, enjoy the summer!  
> Greets  
> Caspinn

“Keep rolling, rolling, rolling,” Yaël hummed while pulling on the wheels of the wheelchair one of the Asgardians had fabricated for her. A towel, some fresh clothes and bandages and the cloak she had been gifted back on Sakaar were balancing on her lap.

Oh, man, Charles should see her right now. They could be wheelchair buddies, doing wheelies with the carriage. Or not, maybe, as Charles was already an old man in real life. But they’d still be wheelchair buddies that played checkers or chess together.

Right when she rolled passed Loki’s dorm, he walked out of it, shut the door behind him and almost tripped over the passing wheelchair. He picked up his stuff that he had dropped, which were also a towel and some fresh clothes and walked next to her when she rolled on.

“So, how’s the girls’ dormitory?” he asked curiously. Because families got rooms apart, and because there was a shortage of seperate bedrooms, Thor had to make the decision to put the rest of the men and women in huge dorms.

“I wouldn’t know, I kept bumping up against everybody, and accidentally almost ran over a few kids so they moved me to a private room,” Yaël replied. Brunnhildeshared a room with her though, which was lucky because it was a huge assignment for Yaël to undress and get in her bed. So sometimes, without Yaël asking for it as she was a bit ashamed she needed help for something she was used to doing on her own perfectly, Hilde busted her fighting with her clothes or wheelchair and helped her out.

“And where are you headed to now, may I ask?” Loki was in a curious mood, obviously.

“The men’s showers.”

“What? But, why-“ Loki got interrupted by Thor, randomly joining them as he started walking next to Yaël’s other side.

“Good morning! What’s the day bringing us?” he asked cheerfully. Thor ended up with and eyepatch and Yaël with a wheelchair, that was how much damage Hela had caused them.

“She’s off to the men’s showers,” Loki stated, looking at his brother for backup.

“Why would you venture there, lady Yaël? The women have a perfectly working bathroom, too, do they not?” Thor asked in confusion, raising his eyebrows.

Yaël sighed and stopped pulling herself forward for a moment.

“Look, you probably haven’t noticed it yet since you’ve never walked inside that room, but the walls surrounding the women’s bathroom are made of glass. The Grandmaster designed it so the showers are actually a peepshow. Everyone who passes through the hallways can see the women shower!”

“That’s…unfortunate. I’m going to gather some people to fix that problem,” and with that, Thor left their company. Yaël was glad he took the problem seriously, instead of laughing it away. Thor had grown more mature, that was for sure.

“Since when do you care about that?” Loki asked, resuming his walk as Yaël started rolling again.

“Dear Loki,” Yaël smiled, “since I have a hole in my leg and my hand and a scar on my forehead, I’m not that easy to look at anymore. That, and I heard you have stools in your showers.”

Yaël was glad that her other wounds from the past months had healed completely, like the burn Nilla had caused. But here in space, there wasn’t a Dr. Cho with cool stuff that could make the wounds healing quick and cleanly. Loki snorted.

“What is it?” she glanced at him with suspicion.

“Nothing could make you look _not easy to look at_ ,” he answered bluntly.

“Oh,” Yaël answered, “You want to look at it then, I swear, it looks gory as hell!” Loki grinned as he held the door open so she could roll through it.

The door led to a small hallway, with on each side more doors.

“Well, have fun in the men’s showers,” Loki said as he opened one of the doors and walked in.

“What?! You have separate compartments?! Man, that Grandmaster was a sexist.” Yaël knocked on a door and pulled it open when nobody answered. With some fiddling to hold the door open while steering the wheelchair, she finally managed to get herself in her compartment.

Now, the fun part…Yaël bowed down to pull out her shoes and socks and started hissing already as she couldn’t avoid pressing her upper body against her wound. After a few minutes, which felt like hours, she could finally start wrestling herself out of her pants. Sometimes she even needed to take a break.

“Are you okay in there?” Loki asked. He was probably done with showering already.

“I’M NOT A HELPLESS LITTLE GIRL, OKAY?!” Yaël grunted out of frustration as she tried to lean more on one leg to get the other one out of her pants.

“Do you require my help?”

“NO! I can do this!” she huffed, followed by some curse words after she bumped her bad hand against the wall.

“I can hear that.” Loki opened the door, no longer waiting for her to let him in. Yaël felt her cheeks redden immediately, but she decided not to talk about it. Better to just get this over with, after all.

Without words, he carefully pulled her out of her clothes. When Yaël fiddled with the bandages to get them off, she noticed he was staring at her. She looked up.

 “Yeah,” she said, “I told you it was bad.” Looked back down and teared the patches off. It saddened her, she had to carry those scars the rest of her life. For a second, Loki looked confused, then, without another word, he left her alone so she could take her shower.

When she was finished and shut off the water, she looked at the pile of fresh bandages and clothes, waiting for her. She was hopping towards her wheelchair when Loki walked back in again.

“You don’t have to help me, you know?’ Yaël knew him well enough to notice he wasn’t in a talkative mood, which happened sometimes, mostly when something troubled his mind, as he didn’t answer her, but instead reached his hand to her so he could guide her back to her chair.

The smartest way to cope with Loki’s silence had always been waiting for him to talk about it. So instead of asking questions, she simply gave him some directions on how to put on the bandages.

Of course some people had noticed Yaël and Loki walking out of the shower-department together and splitting their ways afterwards. In the following hours, she got stared at and heard gossips coming from all around her. To what fucking planet did she have to move to not get stared at?

“She’s sleeping with him to get male-bathroom privileges, I’m sure of it!” a lady whispered to her friend as Yaël passed them.

“Yeah,” Yaël said loudly, so the two women would surely hear her, while keeping on rolling “And I’m sleeping with Thor too, so I have two shower stalls to choose between!” Idiots. The women looked at her in shock and they hurried off to get as much distance between them as possible.

She couldn’t wait to be home again and visit Peter and tell him about space, but she still wasn’t sure he had survived the fight. And Steve, Yaël missed Steve, the humble giant. The superhero that felt like a normal man, taking his jogs in the park whenever he wanted to. But when was she ever going to get home?

Yaël supposed that the Asgardians and the Sakaar- escapees would be searching for a new planet to live on. How or where, she wasn’t aware of. Somehow, Yaël would get back home, right? Maybe it would take a few years longer than she had expected when she travelled to Norway…

“Yaël!” she almost jumped out of her wheelchair when Brunnhilde called her. “There you are! Are you ready for the meeting? We’re going to have dinner first and damn I hope they found some good stuff to drink on this ship!”

“Wait a sec, what kind of meeting?” Brunnhildeautomatically grabbed the handles of her wheelchair and started pushing her, which was kind of nice because her arms were feeling soar, but on the other side, Yaël was too headstrong to admit she wanted help. She could roll wherever she fucking wanted, all by herself.

“The board meeting,” Hilde pulled her out of her thoughts.

“What?!” Yaël’s voices echoed through the iron hallway. “Who put me in the board in the first place?!” she asked, trying her best to be a bit more quiet. What dumb piece of salmon would do that? The last thing Yaël wanted to do is interfere with important stuff.

“Uh, Loki kind of demanded it,” the Valkery shrugged.

“Oh god!” she grunted. “I hope he doesn’t think I’m going to stay with the freaking Asgardians for the rest of my life. And I can assure you, I live a long life!”

“What’s wrong with the Asgardians?” Oh, right, Hilde was in fact an Asgardian.

“They live with sticks in their asses, the conceited, self-absorbed, narcissistic-“

“Okay, calm down now, they can hear you,” Brunnhilde grinned.

“AND THEY SHOULD!” Yaël grumbled.

“Come on, Yaël,” Hilde said calmly, but Yaël noticed she had fun in the conversation. “They just have to grow on you, just as you have to grow on them. It works in two ways, you know?”

“Shut up, you’re one of them, you annoyingly wonderful and pleasant woman, you.” She crossed her arms and pouted, mature as usual. She really, really, really just wanted to go back to earth and stop grumbling around from being stuck on a spaceship.

Once they had entered the big dining room, just another glass and metal room but filled with long, metal tables and benches, Hilde parked Yaël next to her. Yaël noticed how close she was sitting to the head of the table, where Thor was sitting with to his right, Loki. Yaël glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, but he didn’t look back, to busy talking to Thor. As the minutes passed, the tables got more and more filled. Hulk, Heimdall and Korg joined them. She looked around to see where Miek was, but couldn’t find him. Maybe he wasn’t coming?

After a little while, some sort of food got served. Of course it wasn’t fancy at all, it was the exact opposite, but everyone was happy to have a meal. Something brownish with accents of yellow and green got dropped onto Yaël’s plate. She couldn’t even place the smell of it.

“Is this Asgardian?” Yaël whispered to Brunnhilde, who already started eating.

“Well,” she answered with a full mouth “It should be, usually, it looks more like food.” Yaël shrugged

“Right, this will do. What does it taste like?” she asked while preparing her first scoop.

“The tears of our enemy,” Hilde joked dryly while putting another scoop in her mouth.

“Alright, salty then,” Yaël punned back, sounding even more dry.

Every now and then, she heard Thor’s laugh rumble through the room. At least, he’ll be a happy, honest and righteous king. For a while, Yaël listened to the happy chattering around her, but when her leg and hand started hurting again, she started rolling around a bit, trying to chatter with the people who came talking to her, who obviously weren’t the Asgardian women. It didn’t take her too long to roll out of the full room to escape into the silence by just rolling around a bit.

As her wounded hand refused to stop aching, Yaël had to wander around, mostly in circles, using only one hand, while humming a bit.

“So, where are you going?” Yaël almost fell out of her wheelchair. People should stop appearing next to her like that!

“Nowhere, I’m going to return in a few minutes,” Yaël answered Loki.

“What are you doing here?”

“Come on,” Yaël said with an unbelieving smile on her face. “Like you are going to leave a room filled with people staring at you to come and check on me. I know you’re not really standing in front of me!” She gave his leg a friendly tap with her elbow, expecting him to disappear, but the man felt solid.

Loki looked down at Yaël, who was staring at the spot she had just stomped him, chocked.

“Surprised?” he asked as he put his hands on his back.

“Wha-what are you doing?” There must be some sort of weird, mischievous goal to this.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes, I noticed your silence and absence,” Yaël marked dryly.

“Indeed,” Loki sighed “So, I noticed something; You told me you have been meeting other men on earth-“

“Oh, seriously-“ Loki interrupted her by raising his hand.

“That, and I tended your wounds today, those that you named as something that makes you _uneasy to look at_.” Yaël nodded. Where was he going with this? “So, I tested something and that was leaving you for a few hours while being well aware of your presence on this ship.”

“A test-“

“In those few hours, I somehow managed to get you into the board and went to the doctors that tended you to check on your condition.” He finished, like he had explained his whole point, but Yaël still didn’t get it.

When Loki noticed that Yaël was mentally searching for answers and trying to get the pieces together, he told her. “I always end up with you. Even though your wounds don’t flatter you, I don’t mind and I would probably mind if you were someone else. Even though I haven’t seen you in person for a long time, as soon as I saw you again, I was by your side again. It seems that I can’t stay away from you.”

“O-okay,” Yaël muttered confusedly. He had told all of this like it was nothing, with a tone that didn’t fit the subject, but that was typical to Loki.

“I hope you can forgive me and give me a new chance,” he turned to her, arms still on his back.

“For what? The steady, loyal, faithful relationship we had?” Yaël grinned.

“Oh, hopefully not so, no! Although, I’d really like you to be more loyal,” Loki smirked back.

“Oh, right. If you’re going to sleep around, you can’t demand me to be a clean, good, well behaved woman that jumps whenever you call me. Buy a dog, Loki. You probably just like me because I’m the only woman who you can have that kind of weird affair with. And how do I know this isn’t just one of your tricks again?”

Loki’s smirk grew into a wide grin. “Don’t call it an affair, dear. We always had so much more than that, yet so much less than a relationship, too.Maybe you should trust me on this.”

“There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you guys!” Brunnhilde stormed towards them. “The meeting is about to start!”

“I’m going to see Thor firstly. Meet me there.” And with that, Loki walked off. Hilde stared at his retreating back before giving Yaël a studying look, mouth opening as she seemed to realize something.

“Something’s up between you two, isn’t there?” Hilde asked as she, once again, grabbed Yaël’s wheelchair.

“No, or, uh, yeah, kind of. Maybe… Nobody knows,” Yaël answered while rubbing her sore leg. Maybe she’s a bit more grateful for Hilde pushing her wheelchair this time, as her hand still didn’t feel alright yet either.

Her thoughts wandered off while Brunnhilde brought her to their destination. Wasn’t it weird that with anybody else, like Jason, she’d be freaking out right now? Well, she still was a bit freaking out, because one part of her brain was wondering what was going to happen if Loki ever wanted to get married. But the other part of her brain told her that that was impossible as Loki didn’t even want to call their weird, deformed relationship _a relationship_. He wasn’t going to cling onto her, right? Well, he had never done that before, so that was so not going to happen now.

They arrived at a more open space, located at the front of the ship. The place was filled with people and Korg, Miek, Hulk and Heimdall were standingon a raise. What kind of weird board meeting was this going to be?

Brunnhilde parked Yaël next to her on the raise after she fist bumpedHulk as she passed. Unfortunately, Banner was stuck in the Hulk again. It saddened Yaël to see him that way, because she wanted to talk to Bruce about the incident when Hulk smashed her into a coma and kind of…changed her life.

“Thor late!” Hulk  grumbled.

“As usual,” Hilde grinned widely.

“He’s probably still doing his make-up,” Yaël added. Hulk shook from laughing, which kind of felt like an earthquake, so everyone in the area looked a bit startled at the green giant.

Hilde smiled when Thor finally arrived.

“Your throne.” With a proud face, Thor sat down on the blue metal and white leather chair. Loki joined them and stopped next to Yaël, and quickly stroked her hand as a way of greeting her. More whispering raised from the crowd. Oh, yeah, sure, this was going well! Goddammit, Loki, Yaël inwardly grumbled.

“So,” Thor sighed. “King of Asgard.” With a little smile, he waved at his people behind him. Yaël was still getting used to his eyepatch. He managed to look even more like his father now.

“Where to?” Heimdall asked.

“I’m not sure…Any suggestions?” Heimdall raised his eyebrow with a little smile. The new king was, obviously, still a young one. “Miek, where are you from?” he asked to the unmoving purple creature in Korg’s hands.

“Oh,” Korg pointed at his friend. “Miek’s dead.”

“Oh.” Thor blinked, obviously not knowing what to say as everything that came out of Korg’s mouth always sounded like it was no big deal.

“Yeah, no…I accidentally stomped on him on the bridge. I just felt so guilty, I’ve been carrying him around the entire time.” Brunnhildesubtly put her hand over her mouth to cover her disgust. Even Yaël felt her stomach turning. How wasn’t the whole spaceship covered in a corpse-stank yet?

Out of the blue, with a weird sounding shriek, Miek started moving again and woke up.

“Aww, Miek, you’re alive!” Korg said happily. “He’s alive, guys! What was your question again?” A relieved sigh went over the whole room. Thor, obviously trying to ignore what weird shit just had happened, made a decision.

“Earth it is.”


End file.
